desolate
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdɛsələt/
ipa: /ˈdɛsəleɪt/
Forms: form: desolates
form: desolating
form: desolated
form: desolated
Etymology: From Middle English desolaten (“to desolate”), from desolat(e) (“desolate”), from Latin dēsōlātus, perfect passive participle of dēsōlō (“to leave alone, make lonely, lay waste, desolate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix) for more.
Senses: examples: text: If you consider well of the People of the West-Indies, it is very probable, that they are a newer or younger People, than the People of the old World. And it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by Earthquakes, […] but rather, it was Desolated by a particular Deluge: For Earthquakes are seldom in those Parts.
ref: 1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Vicissitude of Things”, in Essays, London: H. Herringman et al., published 1691, page 204:
text: O Righteous Themis, if the Pow’rs above
By Pray’rs are bent to pity, and to love;
If humane Miseries can move their Mind;
If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;
Tell how we may restore, by second birth,
Mankind, and people desolated Earth.
ref: 1717, John Dryden, transl., Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dublin: G. Risk et al., published 1727, Volume I, Book I, p. 16:
text: York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to estimate its ordinary population […]
ref: 1891, Charles Creighton, chapter 1, in A History of Epidemics in Britain, Cambridge University Press, page 23:
synonyms: depeople
depopulate
dispeople
unpeople
unpopulate
glosses: To deprive of inhabitants.
examples: text: Then Moath pointed where a cloud
Of Locusts, from the desolated fields
Of Syria, wing’d their way.
ref: 1801, Robert Southey, “The Third Book”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume I, London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC, page 168:
text: But in Utopia there will be wide stretches of cheerless or unhealthy or toilsome or dangerous land with never a household; there will be regions of mining and smelting, black with the smoke of furnaces and gashed and desolated by mines, with a sort of weird inhospitable grandeur of industrial desolation, and the men will come thither and work for a spell and return to civilisation again, washing and changing their attire in the swift gliding train.
ref: 1905, H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 2, § 3:
synonyms: word: devastate
word: ravage
word: destroy
word: annihilate
word: aerosolize
word: atomize
word: benothing
word: bewreck
word: blot out
word: blotto
word: dash
word: decompose
word: demolish
word: desolate
word: devastate
word: diffuse
word: disintegrate
word: disperse
word: dissolve
word: eliminate
word: eradicate
word: erase
word: exterminate
word: extinguish
word: extirpate
word: fuck
word: harry
word: jazz
word: lay waste
word: level
word: liquidate
word: nuke
word: obliterate
word: pull down
word: pulverize
word: race
word: raze
word: ravage
word: remove
word: ruin
word: stamp out
word: total
word: unbreed
word: unexist
word: unmake
word: uproot
word: waste
word: wipe out
word: wipe off
word: wreck
glosses: To devastate or lay waste somewhere.
examples: text: It is not to be supposed that when Cush left Armenia, he left it desolate, and that a rich and long settled country was abandoned altogether; for it would be an absurd way of founding an universal empire, to desolate one country in order to people another.
ref: 1828, Algernon Herbert, Nimrod: A Discourse on Certain Passages of History and Fable:
text: This completion of the Temple and attack upon Christians is the event that marks the apostasy that causes desolation, the detestable act that causes God to desolate (abandon) and destroy the Temple for the last time.
ref: 2007, James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, →ISBN:
text: Combining widowed, separated, and divorced elders into a single group ("desolated"), the data indicated that desolated elders were slightly more lonely than either married or never-married older people (although this trend was not statistically significant at the conventional .05 level).
ref: 2013, Tracey A. Revenson, “Debunking the Myth of Lonelines in Late Life”, in Redefining Social Problems, →ISBN, page 126:
synonyms: give up
relinquish
vacate
withsake
glosses: To abandon or forsake something.
examples: text: It is not altogether uncommon to hear a reader whose heart has been desolated by the poignancy of a narrative complain that the writer is unemotional.
ref: 1914, Arnold Bennett, The Author’s Craft, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Part II, p. 44:
text: Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.
ref: 1948, Alan Paton, chapter 36, in Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, page 271:
synonyms: word: deject
word: get down
word: aggrieve
word: attrist
word: begloom
word: begrieve
word: besorrow
word: grieve
word: bring down
word: contristate
word: dash
word: deject
word: depress
word: desolate
word: dispirit
word: engrieve
word: forset
word: get down
word: grieven
word: moan
word: oppress
word: rue
word: sadden
word: sadden up
word: tristitiate
word: ungladden
word: unhappy
word: upset
glosses: To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.
Related terms: desolation