lay waste

present singular third person lays waste · participle present laying waste · participle past laid waste · past laid waste

1. transitiveTo completely destroy, especially a geographical area or region.

   When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.

   1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 43

   2 more examples

   Thirsting for revenge, his troops stormed the fortress of Kazan on the upper Volga in 1553, slaughtering the defenders just as the Mongols had done when they laid waste Russia's great cities.

   1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 16

   In addition to racking up what looks like a substantial offscreen body count, the movie at one point offers an eight-second introduction for a sleazy used-car salesman character for the sole purpose of justifying Tripp and Creech laying waste to his inventory.

   2017 January 12, Jesse Hassenger, “A literal monster truck is far from the stupidest thing about Monster Trucks”, in The Onion AV Club

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

1. pastsimple past of lie waste