Etymology

devastate

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Today it means: To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest. Full definition →

Latin dēvastātus
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The story

  1. Latin · borrowed fromdēvastātus
  2. English todaydevastate

Borrowed from Latin dēvastātus, perfect passive participle of dēvastō (“to lay waste, devastate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)); from dē- (augmentative prefix) + vastō (“to destroy, lay waste”). See vast. First attested in 1638.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.