Word: spoiling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This fall's California grape harvest was a race against the sun. Unseasonable heat of up to 105° threatened to ripen the fruit too quickly and spoil it for winemaking. But as the last bunches of plump red and golden grapes were dumped safely into crushers last week, growers and vintners were in no mood to raise their goblets to Bacchus. Because of a worldwide glut of wine, this year's harvest of nearly 2 million tons of grapes will be far more than needed. "We are in a hell of a bind here," says Earl Rocca...
...hulks of the infield tossed their anchors and made their muscles, but rather obviously missed the boycotters. Nobody can handle a ball and chain quite like a totalitarian. It did not spoil his mood too much when opening-day Flagman Ed Burke missed the finals in the hammer throw. "Just because I didn't advance doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it," he said. Should some young U.S. hammer throwers be inspired, he will be pleased. "They need to learn how to compete," he said kindly. "A lot of them are marshmallows." The winner, Finland...
...prig: "The cold-bath king," Ralph Richardson called him, "the exaltation of all scoutmasters." Beneath the glamorous raiment one can also glimpse the wily casuist who accepts the flimsiest excuse for invading France and courts his future wife knowing he has already won her as a spoil of war. Perhaps following Olivier's lead, Kline plays Henry as a hero and allows the attentive spectator to listen for the rogue, not between Shakespeare's lines, but in them...
Soviet Union to U.S.: You spoiled our party. We will spoil yours...
Actually, it is not a terrible word but a rather distinguished one, derived from the Latin depopulare and meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "to lay waste, ravage, pillage, spoil." Shakespeare used it in Coriolanus when he had the tribune Sicinius ask, "Where is this viper/ That would depopulate the city?" John Milton's History of England referred to military forces "depopulating all places in their way," and Shelley wrote in Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills of "thine isles depopulate...