spoil, more commonly spoils, applies to what belongs by right or custom to the victor in war or political contest.
the spoils of political victory
plunder applies to what is taken not only in war but in robbery, banditry, grafting, or swindling.
a bootlegger's plunder
booty implies plunder to be shared among confederates.
thieves dividing up their booty
prize applies to spoils captured on the high seas or territorial waters of the enemy.
the wartime right of seizing prizes at sea
loot applies especially to what is taken from victims of a catastrophe.
picked through the ruins for loot
Example Sentences
Verb The village was plundered by the invading army. Thieves had long ago plundered the tomb. The soldiers continued plundering for days. Noun the plunder of the village All evidence suggested that the plunder of the tomb had happened long ago.
Recent Examples on the Web
Verb
Kenyans braved the morning cold on Aug. 9 to vote in an election largely seen as an opportunity to reverse the economic turmoil and plunder hobbling their country. Faustine Ngila, Quartz, 9 Aug. 2022 Whose first and most enduring response to a new neighborhood is desecration, plunder. Han Ong, The New Yorker, 18 July 2022 That model spit out scenarios in which humanity either got more sustainable and equitable, and thus flourished, or continued letting capitalists plunder the planet and our civilization to death.Wired, 7 July 2022 Now, Mike settles for watching the squirrels plunder his apple trees. Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 27 June 2022 Paranoid and provincial — and outrageously ironic considering the United States is built upon centuries of displacement and plunder — the theory proposes that white people are endangered by interlopers intent on ousting them.New York Times, 15 June 2022 Gaming for adults, players will create their characters together at the first session before joining the crew of Pirates of Palm Beach to plunder and pillage the lands of fantasy. Cindy Kent, sun-sentinel.com, 12 Apr. 2022 In an act considered audacious even at the time, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ordered his agents to plunder sculptures from the Parthenon in Greece and bring them back to England in the early 1800s. Eleanor Cummins, The New Republic, 28 Apr. 2022 Roger Ng, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was convicted of helping to plunder billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign-wealth fund in one of the world’s largest financial scandals.WSJ, 9 Apr. 2022
Noun
Not incorrectly, it was viewed as a mechanism oligarchs used for plunder. Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2022 The total value of the plunder is contested — and the subject of the dueling lawsuits as Brink’s and the jewelers feud over how much they should be paid. Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2022 Two days later, news broke of the SEC's plunder of the Big 12’s prized pieces, Oklahoma and Texas. Blake Toppmeyer, USA TODAY, 7 July 2022 Was Henry VIII’s breakup of the rich network of English monasteries an act of plunder, or reform? Wsj Books Staff, WSJ, 29 Apr. 2022 Though there is little sentimentality here about the death of any particular creature—everything, whether plankton or fish or mollusk, is always eating or being eaten—there is a sense of horror at human plunder. Anelise Chen, The Atlantic, 17 May 2022 The first reports of grain plunder emerged in mid-March.New York Times, 5 June 2022 Marcos Jr is the son and namesake of former authoritarian leader Ferdinand Marcos Sr, whose 21-year rule was marked by human rights abuses and plunder of the state coffers. Helen Regan, CNN, 9 May 2022 In the 1800s, one of Egypt’s rulers pried stones off the pyramids to erect new mosques (though, as far as pharaonic plunder goes, European visitors were greedier).New York Times, 24 Apr. 2022 See More