Definition of "despoliation" []

• The act of despoiling or the condition of being despoiled. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "By the time Katherine R. Tsiang visited the temple caves of Xiangtangshan in 1990, the sixth-century complex bore witness to both the Northern Qi's glorious sculpture and its irrevocable despoliation by looters and traders."
• "So I propose that the Scottish Green party makes itself useful for a change and begins a campaign to stop the tartan despoliation of other people's places and stick to despoiling their own."
• "But when the late Saro-Wiwa changed his focus to the despoliation of the delta, suddenly it became the cause du jour of the environmental movement and international journalists."