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/dˈɛsələt/ /dˈɛzələt/ /dˈɛsəlˌeɪt/ Listen

Desolate

adjective

1.

Providing no shelter or sustenance. Synonyms: bare, barren, bleak, stark. "Barren lands" , "The bleak treeless regions of the high Andes" , "The desolate surface of the moon" , "A stark landscape"

2.

Crushed by grief. "A low desolate wail"

verb

(past & past part. desolated; pres. part. desolating)

1.

Leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch. Synonyms: abandon, desert, forsake.

2.

Reduce in population. Synonym: depopulate.

3.

Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly. Synonyms: devastate, lay waste to, ravage, scourge, waste.

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Etymology of 'Desolate'

WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University

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"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books

... I thought these two people's happiness should be sacrificed, or the poor old woman left desolate. Albinia has spirits and energy for a worse infliction, and Edmund Kendal himself is the better for every shock to his secluded habits. If it is a step I would never dare advise, still less ...

— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there was no one in the comparatively desolate country about Barrataria who could buy the valuable goods which were brought into that port, but the great object of the owners of this merchandise was to smuggle it up to New Orleans and dispose of it. But ...

— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... her; it was broken by the clock striking eleven. Probably she was roused at the first stroke, for, failing to count, the number seemed to her so interminable that she started up and made to herself fretful complaint. Pain was weakening her self-control; she found herself crying in a weary, desolate way, and could not stop her tears for a long time. The gusts of wind went by her windows and bore their voices away on to the common, wailing and sobbing in the far distance; rain spattered the windows at times. When her tears ceased, Emily hid her face in the pillow ...

— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... Death to spare him if a substitute could be found. Admetus' parents and friends failed him, but his wife Alcestis for his sake was content to leave the light. After a series of speeches of great beauty and pathos she dies, leaving her husband desolate. Heracles arrives at the palace on the day of her death; he notices that some sorrow is come upon his host, but being assured that only a relation has died he remains. Meanwhile Admetus' parents arrive to console him; he reviles them ...

— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... Two of his large ships having been separated from him in a storm before he weathered Cape Horn, had put in at Rio de Janeiro, on the coast of Brazil, from whence they returned to Europe. A frigate commanded by captain Cheap, was shipwrecked on a desolate island in the South-Sea. Mr. Anson having undergone a dreadful tempest, which dispersed his fleet, arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez, where he was joined by the Gloucester, a ship of the line, a sloop, and a pink ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

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