Devastate vs Despoil - What's the difference?
devastate | despoil |
To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.
To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
To break beyond recovery or repair so that the only options are abandonment or the clearing away of useless remains (if any) and starting over.
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