Desecrate vs Despoil - What's the difference?
desecrate | despoil |
(transitive) To profane or violate the sacredness or sanctity of something.
* 1916 — James Whitcomb Riley, The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley ,
(transitive) To remove the consecration from someone or something; to deconsecrate.
(transitive) To inappropriately change.
* 1913 — William Alexander Lambeth and Warren H. Manning,
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=Foreword Desecrated.
*1842 , (Edgar Allan Poe), ‘The Myster of Marie Rogêt’:
*:Here are the very nooks where the unwashed most abound—here are the temples most desecrate .
To deprive for spoil; to take spoil from; to plunder; to rob; to pillage.
*Macaulay
*:a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled
*2010 , The Economist , 17 July, p.53:
*:To dreamers in the West, Tibet is a Shangri-La despoiled by Chinese ruthlessness and rapacity.
To violently strip (someone), with indirect object of their possessions etc.; to rob.
*1614 , (Sir Walter Raleigh), History of the World :
*:The Earl of March, following the plain path which his father had trodden out, despoiled Henry the father, and Edward the son, both of their lives and kingdom.
*1667 , (John Milton), Paradise Lost , Book 9, 410-11:
*:To intercept thy way, or send thee back / Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss.
*1849 , , History of England , Ch.20:
*:A law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled .
To strip (someone) of their clothes; to undress.
*:
*:So syr Persants doughter dyd as her fader bad her / and soo she wente vnto syr Beaumayns bed / & pryuely she dispoylled her / & leid her doune by hym / & thenne he awoke & sawe her & asked her what she was
As verbs the difference between desecrate and despoil
is that desecrate is (transitive) to profane or violate the sacredness or sanctity of something while despoil is to deprive for spoil; to take spoil from; to plunder; to rob; to pillage.As an adjective desecrate
is desecrated.As a noun despoil is
(obsolete) plunder; spoliation.desecrate
English
Verb
Volume 10.
- It's reform -- reform! You're going to 'turn over a new leaf,' and all that, and sign the pledge, and quit cigars, and go to work, and pay your debts, and gravitate back into Sunday-school, where you can make love to the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion, and desecrate the sanctity of the innermost pale of the church by confessions at Class of your 'thorough conversion'!
Thomas Jefferson as an Architect and a Designer of Landscapes.
- A subsequent owner has desecrated the main hall and robbed it of its grandeur by putting in a floor just beneath the circular windows in order to make an upper room over the hall.
citation, passage=Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […] A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.}}
