1. To become, or make food become, bad and no longer suitable for eating.
2. To damage something’s quality or reduce the pleasure or benefit it gives.
3. To treat someone with special generosity, sometimes so excessively that it encourages unreasonable expectations.
Use it for
Words that belong together
- food spoils
- spoiled meat
- milk begins to spoil
On the page
The meat had spoiled before anyone returned to the house.
Without power, the food in the cold room soon spoiled.
A new road spoiled the view from the cemetery.
She would not let the quarrel spoil the last afternoon they had together.
Her grandfather spoiled her with books and elaborate breakfasts.
Word forms
- Base
- spoil
- Past tense
- spoiled (also spoilt)
- Past participle
- spoiled (also spoilt)
- Present participle
- spoiling
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- spoil
- Present continuous
- am/is/are spoiling
- Present perfect
- have/has spoiled (also spoilt)
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been spoiling
- Past
- spoiled (also spoilt)
- Past continuous
- was/were spoiling
- Past perfect
- had spoiled (also spoilt)
- Past perfect continuous
- had been spoiling
- Future
- will spoil
- Future continuous
- will be spoiling
- Future perfect
- will have spoiled (also spoilt)
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been spoiling
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Verb: spoils; spoiled or spoilt; spoiled or spoilt; spoiling. Spoiled is the usual US form; spoilt is a common British variant, not another entry. Food deterioration can be intransitive or transitive. Material spoil is uncountable; gains or plunder usually take the plural spoils. Register: neutral. Commonness: common; excavated-material sense is more technical (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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