desolate

comparative more desolate · superlative most desolate

1. Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.

   a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house

   3 more examples

   I will make Jerusalem […] a den of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 9:11

   And the silvery marish flowers that throng / The desolate creeks and pools among.

   1830, Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Dying Swan

   There are few sights that leave a railway lover more wistful than a desolate railway viaduct no longer carrying tracks. As with tunnels, so much effort was made to conquer the landscape, yet so many now stand forlorn.

   2025 November 26, Tim Dunn, “Lost and found: historical assets”, in RAIL, number 1049, page 55

   Synonyms: peopleless, uninhabited, abandoned, derelict, desert, deserted, discarded, dropped · Antonyms: inhabited, populated

2. Barren and lifeless.

   Synonyms: dearthful, scrunty, sere, sterile · Antonyms: fertile

3. Made unfit for habitation or use because of neglect, destruction etc.

   desolate altars

   Synonyms: devastated, empty, forsaken, ravaged, wasted

4. Dismal or dreary.

   Synonyms: bleak, gloomy, cheerless, comfortless, bleak, dark, morose, depressing · Antonyms: cheerful

5. Sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.

   2 more examples

   voice of the poor and desolate

   1827, [John Keble], The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC

   Any help and suggestions from our gay brothers and sisters would be appreciated from this isolated camp. We need some contacts: lawyers, organizations, or people who are concerned enough to help. We are two desolate, suppressed lesbians! We are seeking help from anyone who will help us fight for our rights.

   1983 December 10, Mike Riegle, quoting Lorrie Ong and Jackie Jackson, “Sexual Politics of "Crime": Inside and Out”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 21, page 5

   Synonyms: miserable, sorrowful, atrabiliary, atrabilious, blitheless, dispirited, blue, bummed out · Antonyms: comforting

present singular third person desolates · participle present desolating · participle past desolated · past desolated

1. To deprive of inhabitants.

   York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to estimate its ordinary population […]

   1891, Charles Creighton, chapter 1, in A History of Epidemics in Britain, Cambridge University Press, page 23

   2 more examples

   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.

   1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Vicissitude of Things”, in Essays, London: H. Herringman et al., published 1691, page 204

   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.

   1717, John Dryden, transl., Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dublin: G. Risk et al., published 1727, Volume I, Book I, p. 16

   Synonyms: depeople, depopulate, dispeople, unpeople, unpopulate

2. To devastate or lay waste somewhere.

   Then Moath pointed where a cloud Of Locusts, from the desolated fields Of Syria, wing’d their way.

   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

   1 more example

   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.

   1905, H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 2, § 3

   Synonyms: devastate, ravage, destroy, annihilate, aerosolize, atomize, benothing, bewreck

3. To abandon or forsake something.

   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.

   2007, James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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.

   1828, Algernon Herbert, Nimrod: A Discourse on Certain Passages of History and Fable

   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).

   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

4. To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.

   1948, Alan Paton, chapter 36, in Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, page 271

   1 more example

   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.

   1914, Arnold Bennett, The Author’s Craft, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Part II, p. 44

   Synonyms: deject, get down, aggrieve, attrist, begloom, begrieve, besorrow, grieve