despoil

The naysayers list a cavalcade of complaints against the new Win-River casino complex, saying it would despoil prime farmland, exacerbate traffic, increase police and fire protection costs and threaten native fish in the Sacramento River.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2023

There is an economic aspect to the story in that greed is driving developers to despoil these areas because they see profit.

From Salon ● Mar. 2, 2023

The slightest mistake would despoil the land and the waters, and America has seen plenty of such mistakes over the years.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 5, 2023

That measure is opposed by members of the local Mura tribe, who say mining would despoil the natural habitat upon which they depend.

From Reuters ● Mar. 23, 2022

The skull seemed to grimace in defiance, daring a stranger to despoil the royal treasures.

From "The Book of Three" by Lloyd Alexander

Unfortunately, your visit to Glacier NP was an example of exactly the kind of behavior that despoils and degrades our parks and wildernesses.

From New York Times ● Sep. 20, 2016

There are many benefits of not selling water in disposable bottles in national parks, including reducing trash at parks, carbon emissions and the litter that despoils our parks, landscape and waterways.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 24, 2015

Roger is jealous when Jane flirts with Manishewitz Jr.—“I thought you liked the crabs rangoon here!”—and despoils her new, Roger-free apartment accordingly.

From Slate ● May 14, 2012

Happily, the remedy to his dilemma comes to Nam in a dream: a blue-eyed American sergeant breaks into a bucolic toy community and despoils the place.

From Time Magazine Archive

Ultra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personality under designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principal attraction.

From The Simple Life by Mary Louise Hendee

Metaphors may have no place at a concentration camp, but it’s hard to look at this beautiful enclosed space and not see it, perversely, as the most despoiled of Edens.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023

Playing the last days of Romanian communism as frenzied farce, Lucian Pintilie’s “The Oak” is set in a world so despoiled a Hieronymus Bosch landscape might seem bucolic by comparison.

From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2023

Morton, Douglas even went as far as arguing for standing for organizations to sue on behalf of nature when it was “about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers.”

From Washington Post ● Jan. 26, 2023

Too much of Seattle has been despoiled by the greed and power of developers.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 18, 2022

But in 1570 the island was taken by the Turks; and Antonio Davila, the father of the historian, had to leave it, despoiled of all he possessed.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 10 "David, St" to "Demidov" by Various

Plastic, along with other litter, is also despoiling the landscape and polluting our waterways.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 2023

And my sister once used a sheet of carbon paper as Ken’s blanket, despoiling his face with permanent blue ink.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2023

I just wish I hadn’t let my fandom lead me into the fluorescent-lit land of plot despoiling.

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2022

A global explosion of disposable plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is increasing carbon emissions, despoiling the world's oceans, harming wildlife and contaminating the food chain.

From Reuters ● Feb. 18, 2022

But in the background of all the conversations among the visitors to the island was indignation at the despoiling of the roads they had traveled.

From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson