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Devastate   Listen
verb
Devastate  v. t.  (past & past part. devastated; pres. part. devastating)  To lay waste; to ravage; to desolate. "Whole countries... were devastated."
Synonyms: To waste; ravage; desolate; destroy; demolish; plunder; pillage.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Devastate" Quotes from Famous Books



... being still in Siena, and Cesare's patience exhausted, he issued an ultimatum from his camp at Sartiano in which he declared that if, within twenty-four hours, Petrucci had not been expelled from the city, he would loose his soldiers upon Siena to devastate the territory, and would treat every inhabitant "as a Pandolfo ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... when their assembly would have been justified by the exigency of the crisis. But while the Athenians remained inactive behind their walls, the cavalry was sent out on skirmishing expeditions, and a large fleet was sent to the Peloponnesus with orders to devastate the country in retaliation. The Spartans, after having spent thirty or forty days in Attica, retired for want of provisions. AEgina was also invaded, and the inhabitants were expelled and sent to the Peloponnesus. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Peas often suffer badly from the attacks of Peronospora viciae, which is the cause of Pea Mould, yet the most deadly foe to Peas, especially late Peas, is a fungus of a totally different character. To such an extent does the Pea Blight sometimes devastate the later Peas, particularly in dry summers, that the whole crop is in some gardens completely annihilated. The name of the fungus of the Pea Blight or Mildew is Erysiphe Martii. Its attack is often made suddenly; the leaves then lose their natural green colour, and become ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... commanders of regiments are bribed with heavy sums by the villagers to encamp outside their walls. Troops are not the only source of anxiety to the poor fellaheen. Princes and Government officials also travel with an enormous following, mainly composed of hangers-on and riff-raff, who plunder and devastate as ruthlessly as a band of Kurd or Turkoman robbers. They are even worse than the soldiery, for the latter usually leave the women alone. Occasionally a whole village migrates to the mountains on the approach ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... morning dress I am forced to hear things which sadden me deeply. The chaplain reads the papers aloud to us, and I see that the republic loses daily in power and dignity; the neighboring powers invade it under divers pretexts; their troops pillage and devastate the country, while the Government refuses to interfere.... I dare not think of the future, but my father says we must enjoy the present. All speak in subdued tones of the woes which threaten Poland, and then dance and drink; the joyous festivals and banquets would deceive one into thinking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... places, and the air is thick and heavy. We shall not go down there until we need. When we must descend we shall find an abundance of maize, and fruits of all sorts. The savages kill the people they find on the estates, but do not destroy the crops or devastate the fields. They are wise enough to know that these are useful to them, and though they are too lazy to work themselves they appreciate the good things that ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Continental Congress:—Why do we delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and to conquer, but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever increasing ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... Squadron died, but with it died not less than three times as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps where the very backbone of resistance to the ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... full of delight is my supremacy, Full of delight do I as a goddess walk supreme. Ishtar, the goddess of morning am I, Ishtar, the goddess of evening am I, (I am) Ishtar,—to open the lock of heaven belongs to my supremacy. Heaven I destroy, earth I devastate,[461]—such is my supremacy. The destroyer of heaven, the devastator of the earth,—such is my majesty. To rise up out of the foundation of heaven, Whose fame shines among the habitation of men,—such is my supremacy. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... at just the wrong place, can devastate any enterprise. One tiny transistor can go wrong ... and ruin a multi-million dollar missile. Which would be one ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the difference: The government which formerly fed and housed these monsters, under cunning kennels of perverted law, and broke open holes in the palisades of society, that they might crawl through and devastate the community, now shuts up every crevice through which they could enter; stops every hole of opportunity; crushes down every uprising instinct of cruelty and selfishness. And the wolves have disappeared; and our little world is ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... cannot say. They evidently had not been made public, and various rumours were in circulation. Some said that Geoffrey would hold Britanny of Philip; or he had been made seneschal of France, an office that ought to go with the county of Anjou; or he was about to invade and devastate Normandy. It is probable that some overt action would have been undertaken very shortly when suddenly, on August 19, Geoffrey died, having been mortally hurt in a tournament, or from an attack of fever, or perhaps from both causes. He was buried in Paris, Philip showing great ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... planted under the windows of you," raved Schmetz, "the demon hens of le docteur Geddes are with their paws upturning! They upturn with rapidity and completeness, led by a shameless hog of a rooster. Is it the orders of you that I devastate those fowls, Mademoiselle?" ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... were there in sufficient number to afford a good day's sport under other circumstances, while a profusion of various kinds of flowers afforded satisfaction to the eye, in strong contrast to the bare and barkless trunks of trees riven by the frequent storms that devastate these hills. In one place a most gruesome sight was met with. Under a small tree beside a tiny stream stood a three-legged cooking-pot, and round it lay three skeletons, with a scattering of shrapnel bullets to silently tell the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... conflict in Europe a fair fight, the duty of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... enemy, knowing our destitution of gun-boats, and well apprised of the paucity of our garrisons, are sending expeditions southward to devastate the coast. They say New Orleans will be taken before spring, and communication be opened with Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio. They will not succeed so soon; but success is certain ultimately, if Mr. Benjamin, Gen. Winder, and Gen. Huger ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... boughs of a water- maple, where it would form building material for countless generations of birds. The fat cornfields were often littered with a varied wreckage which the farmers must soon heap together and burn, to be rid of it, and everywhere were proofs of the river's power to devastate as well as enrich its shores. The dwellers there had no power against it, in its moments of insensate rage, and the land no protection from its encroachments except in the simple device of the willow hedges, which, if planted, sometimes refused to grow, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... belongs to this lonely pleasaunce of the upper world, on a sheltered slope of ever-burning Gedeh, quiescent now save for the blue curl of sulphurous smoke, which gives perpetual warning of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate the surrounding country. Subterranean activity increases during the rainy season, and tremors of earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of those unused to the perils of existence on this thin crust of Mother ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... an envious few held to the contrary: that these fair-skins had come as evil emissaries from the still more evil Mictlanteuctli, mighty Lord of Death-land, who had laden them with pestilence and brain-sorrow and eye-darkness, with orders to devastate this, the last fair city of ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... of a company of elephants in the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... stones but precious gems to show; And tears (the holy water from sad eyes) Back to God's sea, from which all rivers rise, Let me convey, not blood from wounded hearts, Nor poison which the upas tree imparts. When over flowery vales I leap with joy, Let me not devastate them, nor destroy, But rather leave them fairer to the sight; Mine be the lot to comfort and delight. And if down awful chasms I needs must leap, Let me not murmur at my lot, but sweep On bravely to the end without one fear, Knowing ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... errors or defects of the better characters. Good, in the widest sense, seems thus to be the principle of life and health in the world; evil, at least in these worst forms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it violently, and, in the struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... Magellanus; Of how on the horrible frontiers of the Void He had watched in vain, lit red with beacon-fires The desperate coasts o' the black abyss, whence none Ever returned, though many a week he watched Beneath the Cross; and only saw God's wrath Burn through the heavens and devastate the mountains, And hurl unheard of oceans roaring down After the lost ships in one cataract Of thunder and splendour and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Teuton barbarians came to devastate the enchanting loveliness of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic centuries, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps, at a certain region called aux fenils (ad fines), where a glacial stream rushes across the narrow valley ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... Russia, Moscow. The Russian roads from Vilna to Vitebsk are full of endless lines of troops, squadrons of cavalry in close formation, and enormous baggage trains. The Russians know that their freedom is in danger; they burn their own towns and villages, devastate their own provinces, and retire little by little, as they did a hundred years earlier when Charles XII. invaded Russia. At length there is a battle at Moscow, and the French army enters the town. We see in imagination the September nights lighted up far and wide by a blazing ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... SCHINES AND Co. are spouting. You and I, my brothers and sisters, as I'm proud to call you, we don't spout, do we? We mean business! And PHILIP means business too! At any moment he may come down on us and devastate our quiet picturesque little demes which we all love so well and get disgustingly drunk on our wine. So give us the word, SCHINES AND Co.—not many words, please, but just one word—and we'll tackle him as he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various

... army, and of legalized flogging in the navy, against the prejudice-warped judgments of both, and, from the beneficial effects there, I have nothing to fear from the immediate abolition of slavery. I fear, rather, the violent consequences from a continuance of the evil. But should such an act devastate the whole State of Louisiana, and render the whole soil here but the mere passage-way of the fruits of the enterprise and industry of the Northwest, it would be better for the country at large than it is now as the seat ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... percent of the energy is released in less than one millionth of a second. Most of this is in the form of the heat and shock waves which produce the damage. It is this immediate and direct explosive power which could devastate the urban centers in a ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

... spectacle provided for her amusement, without rancour, but equally without pity. Beatrice was contemptuous. What right, said her countenance, had a servant-girl to covet jewellery? And how pitiable the spirit that prompted to a filching of half-crowns! For the criminals of finance, who devastate a thousand homes, Miss French had no small admiration; crimes such as the present ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... "Devastate it," Tako interrupted. "Smash it up, and then we can materialize and take possession of it. My object is to capture a great number ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... the Presbytery of Edinburgh that it was better to cleanse than to fast, and cleanse they must swiftly or else, in spite of all prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation, the cholera would devastate them. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... mischievous with every year that passed. The present appearance of these ruins is thus, to a great extent, to be explained. Travellers in the country agree in describing them as irregular mounds, deeply seamed by the rains; and the sides against which the storms and waterspouts that devastate Mesopotamia would chiefly spend their force are those on which the damage is most conspicuous ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... a foreigner, ignorant of the laws and careless of the feelings of the English. He was accustomed to the military license of France, and had learned from his great kinsman, the conqueror and devastator of the Palatinate, not indeed how to conquer, but how to devastate. A considerable number of prisoners were immediately selected for execution. Among them was a youth famous for his speed. Hopes were held out to him that his life would be spared If he could run a race with one of the colts of the marsh. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... tell you what this could mean to American security," he went on. "If enemy subs slipped through our continental defenses, their missiles could devastate the United States with scarcely an instant's warning! The whole country's been rocked by the announcement. An official comment by our Defense Department ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... slaty stones, suitable for wall, lie around in abundance, brought down by the avalanche, which a year or two ago endangered the station, but happily did no more damage than destroy the powder-house and devastate the burial-ground. Kegs of powder and tombstones were carried far out on to the ice of the bay. Most of the latter were recovered unbroken and replaced, and among them the one of which we are in search. Here it is, ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... covered as it was in the ashes of the after years, there was the old living spark of humanity in David Drennen. Ygerne Bellaire came in time to fan it into a warming glow. The fire which should come from it should be her affair. It would cheer with its warmth; or it should devastate with its flames. The spark, fanned into love's fire, had in an instant sent its flickering light throughout the darker places of ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... cultivated for local consumption, although Guadeloupe is still dependent on imported food, mainly from France. Light industry features sugar and rum production. Most manufactured goods and fuel are imported. Unemployment is especially high among the young. Hurricanes periodically devastate the economy. ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... show her some small attentions on deck. And that is all. Under such conditions, signs can be seen only by a sharp and practised eye. I am alluding now to troubles which are subtle often to the extent of not being understood by the very hearts they devastate ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... close at hand, Etna, the home of eternal fire. Deep in the heart of earth dwell two irresistible forces, wind and fire.[347] It is their conflict that causes the outbursts of flame and molten rock that devastate the slopes of Etna. It is no smithy of the gods, no Titan's prison. The causes are natural, water and wind and fire. He has seen Etna; he describes the crater,[348] the volcanic rock that can imprison fire,[349] the clouds that continually veil the mountain's crest,[350] the flames that ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... out of Asia to devastate Europe, at length turned Christian, adopted a Slavic speech, and entered the family of European nations. The Magyars, who followed them, also made their way into the fellowship of Christendom. Quite the opposite has been the case with the Turks. Preserving their Asiatic ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... if we are able to abandon the sentimental view and look facts in the face—as many anointed chaplains in Europe are doing—science not only eliminates typhoid but is able to prevent those terrible diseases that devastate armies and nations. And science is no longer confined to the physical but has invaded the social kingdom, is able to weave a juster fabric into the government of peoples. On all sides we are beginning to embrace the religion of self-reliance, a faith that God is on the side of intelligence—intelligence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the defiance, and at once gave notice that he should sally out of Boston and burn all the neighboring towns and devastate the country." ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... sewage; he can entrap the nitrogen in the air and use it to raise wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter, his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch. The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem as complete an ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... said the visitor. "Not so very much to see after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!" ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... nodding his head; and then almost in silence he followed his guide, often feeling disposed to try and shoot one or other of the nocturnal birds that flitted silently by, or one of the great fruit bats that, longer in their spread of wings than rooks, flew in flocks on their way to devastate some ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... coastal range recedes and is of much lower elevation, and to these facts perhaps is to be attributed our modified rainfall compared with the plethora of the immediate North; but we get our share, and when people deplore the droughts which devastate Australia, let it be remembered that Australia is huge, and the most rigorous of Australian droughts merely partial. This country has never known drought. During the partial drought which ended with 1905, and which occasioned great losses throughout the pastoral tracts of Queensland, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... of the family;—yes, the fame of the late lord, who lived as though he were a fiend let loose from hell to devastate mankind. The glory of the family! And how will he maintain it? At racecourses, in betting-clubs, among loose women, with luscious wines, never doing one stroke of work for man or God, consuming and never ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... that the German genius aspires" (Kaiser Wilhelm, Speech at Aix-la-Chapelle, June 20, 1902)—a nation thus armed, instructed, disciplined, and demoralized had broken loose. Another Attila had come, with a new horde behind him to devastate and change the face of the world. In the tumult and darkness which enfolded Europe, the Werwolf was at large. We could hear his ululations in the forest. The cries of his victims grew louder, piercing our hearts with pity and ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... word. Death had suddenly deprived her of a mother who was necessary to her comfort and to whose presence she was accustomed, and her heart was full of angry resentment at the fate which had dared to take away a member of her household. It had never entered her thoughts that death could devastate HER home. ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... gladness in their song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in verdure and cause it to burst ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,' said I. 'Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out in our navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared? Was there ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... devastate a city like fire and pestilence. Social wealth and happiness are through right living. Goodness is a commodity. Conscience in a cashier has a cash value. If arts and industries are flowers and fruits, moralities are the roots that nourish them. Disobedience is slavery. Obedience ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... was quite cool after the rain of last night. The country through which we passed had been in the enemy's hands last year, and was evacuated by them after the battles before Richmond; but at that time it was not their custom to burn, destroy, and devastate—everything looked green and beautiful, and did not in the least give one the idea ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... scarcely settled on the throne, when several of the northern barbarians began to devastate the frontier provinces of the empire. These hardy nations, who now found the way to conquer by issuing from their forests, and then retiring on the approach of a superior force, began to be truly formidable to Rome. 13. A'drian had thoughts of contracting ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... in the State, despite his advanced years. His enemies, who were not few, said that the shrewdest action of his surpassingly shrewd life had been his voluntary retirement from the Senate and from political activities at the first low murmur heralding the muck-raking cyclone which was to devastate public life as men of his type understood it. But every inhabitant of the State, including his enemies, took an odd pride in his fiercely debonair defiance to old age, in his grandiloquent, too fluent public addresses, and in the manner ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... was against this people, then, that Caesar at that time conducted a campaign. At first he did not devastate or plunder at all, although they abandoned their villages in the plain. He hoped to make them his subjects of their free will. But when they harassed him as he advanced to Siscia, he became angry, burned their land, and took all the booty ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... believe in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of Bruyeres-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... arrived. In the meantime, Dacre, in charge of the English border, had been fomenting quarrels [Footnote: Lang, Hist. of Scotland, i., 395. L. & P., ii., 779, 795.] and suborning outlaws to raid and devastate in the border counties, and plotting unsuccessfully to have James carried off into England to the tender care of his uncle. Albany, for his part, demanded the custody of the child, which was refused by Margaret; who however was forced to surrender ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... I should like to return to the city seated by your side; and as the good inhabitants of Innspruck are very anxious to see a French general, one of Bonaparte's generals, who does not come with his troops to devastate the city, to rob and plunder, I request you to let us make our entrance in an open, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... ceremonies of the church in the valley. These stern dissenters from the reformed religion were keeping alive that spark which, fanned into a flame some fifty years later, was to sweep through the land and devastate churches, and destroy every outward sign in crucifix, and pictured saint in fair carved niche, and image of seer or king, which were in their eyes the token of that Babylon which was answerable for the blood of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... Calydonian beast. A huge boar sent by Diana to devastate the territory of Aeneus, king of Calydon in Atolia, because he had not paid her due honor. Theseus, Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Nestor, all the famous heroes gathered to destroy the beast, and with them the swift-footed maiden Atalanta. Her arrow gave the first ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds; but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly. His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his bowed trunk as he walked. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley—the senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... probably from a fear of profanation of the dead, perhaps of their being eaten by a victorious enemy. To devastate the cemeteries and temples of the foe was an aim of every invading tribe. It was considered that mutilating a corpse injured the soul that had ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... throw over, knock down over; fell, sink, swamp, scuttle, wreck, shipwreck, engulf, ingulf[obs3], submerge; lay in ashes, lay in ruins; sweep away, erase, wipe out, expunge, raze; level with the dust, level with the ground; waste; atomize, vaporize. deal destruction, desolate, devastate, lay waste, ravage gut; disorganize; dismantle &c. (render useless) 645; devour, swallow up, sap, mine, blast, bomb, blow to smithereens, drop the big one, confound; exterminate, extinguish, quench, annihilate; snuff out, put out, stamp out, trample out; lay in the dust, trample ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... know and understand whether a calamity will come, a famine or wild beasts, floods or drought; whether there will be abundance of grain or dearth; whether the wicked will rule the world; whether locusts will devastate the land; whether the fruits will drop from the trees unripe; whether boils will afflict men; whether wars will prevail, or diseases or plagues among men and cattle; whether good is resolved upon in heaven, or evil; whether blood will flow, and the death-rattle of the slain be ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... they advanced at first, but only in order to prevent the French from approaching their frontier. Since that time, however, in spite of the battle of Pultusk, the Russians have steadily retreated, although the enemy did not compel them to do so. They accomplished thus their own purpose, that is, to devastate a province of Prussia, and protect themselves by this ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... is the cause of a great share of the crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... raw Tucupi, the juice of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but sometimes intentionally through spite when stray oxen devastate the plantations of the poorer people. The juice, is almost certain to be drunk if cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... to carry terror against an enemy, and, removing the danger from oneself, to bring another into peril? Can there be a stronger instance than Hannibal himself, or one more to the point? It makes a great difference whether you devastate the territories of another, or see your own destroyed by fire and sword. He who brings danger upon another has more spirit than he who repels it. Add to this, that the terror excited by unknown circumstances ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... project, scheme, plot. Playful, mischievous, roguish, prankish, sportive, arch. Plentiful, plenteous, abundant, bounteous, copious, profuse, exuberant, luxuriant. Plunder, rifle, loot, sack, pillage, devastate, despoil. Pretty, beautiful, comely, handsome, fair. Profitable, remunerative, lucrative, gainful. Prompt, punctual, ready, expeditious. Pull, draw, drag, haul, tug, tow. Push, shove, thrust. Puzzle, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of things could not last forever, Acquet, despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests, chopping the elms into faggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The very castle whose facade but lately reached to the end of the stately avenue, suffered from his devastations. It was now nothing but a ruin with swing-doors ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... for Thebes Fighting with eminent prowess on her side, Shall be entombed with every sacred rite That follows to the grave the lordliest dead. But for his brother, who, a banished man, Returned to devastate and burn with fire The land of his nativity, the shrines Of his ancestral gods, to feed him fat With Theban carnage, and make captive all That should escape the sword—for Polynices, This law hath been proclaimed ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... harder and harder—for such it might almost be considered, though not one of those fearful storms which so frequently devastate the islands of the Caribbean Sea. The rain, too, beat down furiously, and the spoondrift in thick showers flew off the summits of the seas, shrouding the ship in a dense mist, through which no objects, had any been near, could have been discerned. At present, the chief fear was lest the ship ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... that he may not devastate the land of Zunire, nor the dwellings which are belonging to the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... of things that may happen at a fire and overshadow all interest in the fire itself. A good feature may be found in the property that is threatened. Often the fire in itself is insignificant, but because of a high wind or other circumstances it threatens to spread to neighboring buildings or to devastate a large area. In such a case the amount of property threatened or endangered deserves a place in the very first line, especially if it exceeds the amount of property actually destroyed and if it can be put in a striking way; i. e., the entire waterfront district, or twenty-five ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... ravage, depredate, despoil devastate, sack; corrupt, vitiate, debase, mar, demoralize, deprave, sophisticate, infect, defile, contaminate; disfigure, deface, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... its powers, And thus in season the rich field Gay flowers and luscious fruit doth yield. But at a later, sterile age, The solstice of our earthly years, Mournful Love's deadly trace appears As storms which in chill autumn rage And leave a marsh the fertile ground And devastate the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... of Chu-bu knew no time-limit: he was furious all that night, and next day he was furious still. The situation called for immediate miracles. To devastate the city with a pestilence and kill all his priests was scarcely within his power, therefore he wisely concentrated such divine powers as he had in commanding a little earthquake. "Thus," thought Chu-bu, "will I reassert myself as the only ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... in his breast, As he heard them, in one maddening moment releast All that's evil and fierce in man's nature, to crush And extinguish in man all that's good. In the rush Of wild jealousy, all the fierce passions that waste And darken and devastate intellect, chased From its realm human reason. The wild animal In the bosom of man was set free. And of all Human passions the fiercest, fierce jealousy, fierce As the fire, and more wild than the whirlwind, to pierce And to rend, rush'd upon him; fierce jealousy, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... invented the story of Jesus and then martyred themselves for their falsehood is as intellectually stupid and silly as it is morally monstrous! Not otherwise these leading men of the South were men of the loftiest character, of great personal worth, patriotic, high-minded, and they did not devastate their land and martyr themselves for idle abstractions. Here is John C. Calhoun, ranked by all as one of the triumvirate—Webster, Calhoun and Clay. Here is Gen. Robert E. Lee, of whom Lord Wolsey said that for one State to have given birth to two such men as Washington and Lee was to have ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Marthe entertained the blessed Lord in her own home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the country until Sainte Marthe ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... were for the most part opposed to it. When Clay, in the lofty style common to the time, declared the Americans unconquerable, and that if the enemy should lay in ashes New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and should devastate the whole Atlantic coast, the people would retreat beyond the Alleghenies to live and flourish there, a member from New Jersey protested that this was too high a price for him; that he had no inclination to go beyond the Alleghenies; and that even the Mississippi valley ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth.... all kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him" (Psalm lxxii). Under His gracious reign of power famines and pestilences can no longer devastate this earth. Sickness and diseases will be banished and those who obey the laws of His kingdom will continue to live on earth, so that death, the common thing now, as the wages of sin, will become uncommon during the coming age. What a glory time there is in store for this earth! ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... wide berth. They are mischievous in the extreme, moreover, and do great damage, seemingly wantonly, to any crops or garden patches that they may find in their neighborhood. Usually the natives are too terrified to offer any resistance and placidly allow the animal to devastate to the bent of his will. The cliff dwellers, however, had suffered so much from the depredations of this particular animal that they were determined to drive him out of their neighborhood, and that was the real purpose of ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... astonished slaves," he says, describing the advance on Washington, "rested from their work in the fields contiguous; and the awe-struck peasants and yeomen of this portion of America beheld with perturbation the tremendous preparations to devastate their blooming country." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... to our times as to a long and very bad dream, but day follows the darkest night. Generations have been laid in their graves, murdered, famished, and a prey to disease. Millions, with hatred and murder in their hearts, have died in their efforts to devastate ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... number, so that under a "sea-king" called Eric, they made a descent in the Elbe and the Weser, pillaged Hamburg, penetrated far into Germany, and after gaining two battles, retreated with immense booty. The pirates, thus reinforced on all sides, long continued to devastate Germany, France, and England; some penetrated into Andalusia and Hetruria, where they destroyed the flourishing town of Luni; whilst others, descending the Dnieper, penetrated even ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... of Royal Greens which now advanced to the assault was, it appeared, composed of old acquaintances and neighbors of the Palatines, who had fled to join the Tories and Indians and now returned to devastate their own county. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... (Didelphys azarae) of South America enters farms to devastate the poultry yards. When he is discovered he runs away, but is soon caught, and blows from sticks rain upon him. Seeing that he cannot escape correction he seeks at least to save his life. Letting his head fall and straightening his inert legs he receives the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... Brumley noted quite so vividly Lady Beach-Mandarin's habitual self-surpassingness. She helped him, he felt, to understand better those stories of great waves that sweep in from the ocean and swamp islands and devastate whole littorals. She poured into the Harman nursery and filled every corner of it. She rose to unprecedented heights therein. It seemed to him at moments that they ought to make marks on the walls, like the marks one ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... soldiers and workers seduced by them cry senselessly: Down with the Government! All power to the Soviets! And the Dark servants of the Tsar and the spies of Wilhelm will egg the on; Beat the Jews, beat the shopkeepers, rob the markets, devastate the shops, pillage the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... occupying his own illuminated page; each with his own simple and touching legend. Mr. Leland's little poems will speak to many a heart, and many a mother will read them aloud to the wild boys begging for guns to devastate our forests, to inspire them with mercy for these flying flowers, these musicians of the air. Paper, print, type, arabesques, and designs, are excellent. We heartily congratulate Mr. Leypoldt on the beauty ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... temperate in food and courageous in battle; but men like these, if they existed in sufficient numbers, would devastate the universe. We alone, we Athenians, with less military skill perhaps, and certainly less rigid abstinence from voluptuousness and luxury, have set before it the only grand example of social government and of polished life. From us the seed is scattered; from us flow the streams ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... knows there are enough on either side to devastate the land and rob us of comfort and peace. One wakes in the middle of the night, at the clatter of horses riding by like the wind, and wonders whether it's friend or foe, and trembles till they're out of hearing, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the admiral were beyond all bounds; what to him was the value of the capture of Aisa, of the Turkish alcaid, of the ten thousand of the baser sort; nay, what to him was the value of "Africa" itself when once again like a mocking spirit Dragut had glided beyond the sea horizon to devastate, to plunder, and to slay once more, the scourge and the menace ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... in Nature. We might well ask why the myriads of bacteria do not devastate the earth with their marvelous rapidity of propagation. So indeed they might, were it not for the winds, rains, melting snow and ice which scatter them far and wide, and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... deserves, and as thousands of the people in Georgia hoped we would do. I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina, to devastate that State in the manner we have done in Georgia, and it would have a direst and immediate bearing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... delay of eight days," said Father de la Roche. "No," replied Thomas Kirke, "I shall at once ruin the fort with my cannon." "I desire to sleep to-night in the fort," added his brother Louis, "and, if not, I shall devastate the whole country." "Proceed slowly," said Father de la Roche, "for you are deceived if you believe you will easily gain the fort. There are a hundred men there well armed and ready to sell their lives dearly. Perchance you will find your death in this enterprise, for I assure you that ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... their sins, but only because it is good for them to reflect on their sins at all times and under any circumstance. Nowadays you would have your well-water analysed and ask what the Sanitary Inspector had been about. Or, again, if a fire were to devastate our little town, we should not smite our breasts in the manner of those same forefathers, and attribute it to what there is amongst us of sloth and self-indulgence, to God's wrath upon our drinking habits or our neglect of Sunday observance: we should trace it to a foul chimney ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... channels, and by roundabout courses, to outlets, whence it is to issue as the law, action, and decision of the State; as the wise old Egyptian kings conveyed in different canals, by sub-division, the swelling waters of the Nile, and compelled them to fertilize and not devastate the land. There must be the jus et norma, the law and Rule, or Gauge, of constitution and law, within which the public force must act. Make a breach in either, and the great steam-hammer, with its swift and ponderous ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... hospital says...." "I know a man who was talking with a wounded Tommy, and he...." "An undergraduate friend of my boy's who is just back from France...." Once stories begun in this way would empty a room; but not so now. Now they no longer devastate but fascinate. It does not matter what the stories are about, the fact remains that an opening gambit which three months ago would stamp a man as a triple bore now holds everyone breathless. In short, relations at last have come to their own. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... of leaving a third of the land fallow was to a great extent abolished through a larger use of manure. With the exception of the famine of 1348, due to bad crops, the Burgundian regime was free from the terrible calamities which had never ceased to devastate the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... I was invited to devastate the moors of a friend in the north, and on my journey to his abode, I unexpectedly came within fifteen miles of Gimmerton. The ostler at a roadside public-house was holding a pail of water to refresh my horses, when a cart of very green oats, newly reaped, passed by, and ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... being simply, with his own dull consent, "melted down for the tallow trade," and that he himself is by way of being on a far more perilous margin than that of any one of the gently depressed spirits who devastate his days, and command him to create for them,—not energy, purpose, will,—but, instead, external conditions in which they may more luxuriously enjoy their romantic languor and their comforting consciousness ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... will not be to the West Indies, my dear boy," said Lady Rogers. "I have read such sad accounts of the dreadful yellow fever which kills so many people, and of those terrible hurricanes which send so many ships to the bottom, and devastate whole islands whenever they appear, that I tremble at the thoughts of your ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... "restorations"; this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole. This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies. The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the chicorees ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Hebert is proclaimed as the triumph of freedom, all the citizens are disarmed by way of collateral security; and at the instant he is accused by the Convention of atheism and immorality,* a militant police is sent forth to devastate the churches, and punish those who are detected in observing the Sabbath—"mais plutot souffrir que mourir, c'est la devise des Francois." ["To suffer rather than die is ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... in despair. Thiers, putting his senile fingers in the porridge, stirred a ferment that had not even germinated since the guillotine towered in the Place de la Concorde and the tumbrils rattled through the streets. He did not know what he was stirring. The same impulse that possessed Gladstone to devastate trees animated Thiers. He stirred the dangerous mess because he liked to stir, nothing more. But from that hell's broth the crimson spectre of the Commune was to rise, when the smoke of Sedan had drifted clear ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... so egotistical as ignorance. You know, and so do I, that if no human being existed, the sun would shine, and that tempests would now and then devastate the earth; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, daisies would grow, roses would fill the air with perfume, and now and then volcanoes would illuminate the horizon with their lurid glare; the grass would grow, the waters would run, and so far as nature ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... different way and teach us manners by imposing one taxation after another, or billeting a troop of soldiers upon us, who in one hour empty our coffers and purses, and do not quit as long as we have a farthing left, and in addition, by way of thanks, burn and devastate house and home, and outrage and kill wife and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther



Words linked to "Devastate" :   ruin, devastation, sweep over, lay waste to, destroy, desolate, overcome, ravage, overtake, scourge, waste, overwhelm, whelm



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