"in spite of" wird oft im Sinne von "to spite someone" verwendet - jemandem trotzen. In other words: someone does something in spite of someone else not wanting him/her to do it. You wouldn't use "despite" here.

He quit school in spite of his father's whishes. For example.

@dude: Doch!
As an English speaker, I find "He quit school despite his father's wishes" perfectly normal.

@mxxxx: There may be some very subtle differences, but really I can't think of ANY just now, except that perhaps one is used a little more frequently than the other in spoken or written language, or in one region more than another ... Otherwise, I can't think what they might have been referring to.

@SJA: I didn't mean for that particular sentence (I couldn't think of one that would demonstrate the difference), but I meant in cases where the context has "zum Trotz," for instance. I agree that "despite" works in the example sentence, too, but I do feel that "in spite of" has more of a meaning like "zum Trotz" or "um jemandem zu trotzen." To spite his father, he quite school, e.g.

Well, never mind. I should leave my personal feelings and impressions out of it and simply go straight to the meaning. Here you go:

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficul...
The English terms despite and in spite of are synonyms. Despite might be a tiny bit more formal, but the two terms are interchangeable. Just be careful not to say something like "despite of" or "in despite" - it's always either the three words in spite of, or just the single word despite.

As a native speaker I don't think there is very much difference between despite or inspite of, BUT "to spite" is quite different.To do something "to spite" somebody is to deliberately do something that will go against their wishes and annoy them (to put it mildly).To do something "inspite of" or "despite" is to do something although you have been advised against it, but not because you want to annoy anyone. Or to do something "against all odds". Despite the bad weather, we went out without our coats.Inspite of the bad weather...... She ate the last biscuit to spite her younger brother.

despite = inspite of
but not the same as "to spite"

OT
to spite so. wird im Saarländischen mit dem herrlichen Ausdruck "ebbes gradselääds mache" ausgedrückt. (OK, es ist eine etwas andere Sprachebene... *gg*)

@wallerbee: Note that "inspite of" should be "in spite of", i.e. 3 words as stated in the resource quoted by dude in #4 above.

"Inspite" is not a word :-)

@SJA - thxs - "in spite of" is of course the correct spelling.

the difference between "in spite of" and despite are as follows: "In spite of" is doing something specifically on purpose against something or someone. Like in the above example, "he quit school in spite of his fathers wishes" this is because... he knew his fathers wishes and purposely did something that he knew his father didnt want. Whereas "he quit school despite his fathers wishes" he did it without caring about his fathers wishes one way or another but also without being spiteful about it. He just did it without thinking.

There is no difference between "in spite of" and "despite". Native English speakers know their language.

!! Important for Germans only the preposition:

in spite OF xyz

versus

despite xyz (without OF)

This answers the original question.

Oh, is this dicussion still continuing?

The original question was whether there is a difference between "inspite of" and "despite".
No, there is no difference. As the Oxford dictionary says, they are synonyms.
"I left school early in spite of my father's wishes" or "I left school early despite my father's wishes" is the same thing --> I didn't follow his advice I choose to do differently, it was simply my choice, not intended to hurt him. But "I left school early to spite my father" is being mean and SPITEFUL --> doing it deliberately to ANNOY him, even though it may not have been what I really wanted.