desolate

Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.

Adjective

  1. Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.
    • a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house
    • 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:

    Synonyms: peopleless uninhabited abandoned derelict desert deserted desolate discarded dropped forlorn forsaken high and dry left behind orphaned beingless disinhabited inhabitantless inhabited lifeless solitary tenantless unhabited unoccupied unpeopled

    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 dark morose depressing desolate dire disconsolate dismal doleful dolesome drear drearisome dreary dreich forlorn gayless gray gloomsome grim joyless lack-laughter

    Antonyms: cheerful

  5. Sad, forlorn and hopeless.
    • He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.
    • 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....
    • 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,...

    Synonyms: miserable sorrowful atrabiliary atrabilious blitheless dispirited blue bummed out chapfallen cheerless chopfallen crestfallen cut up damp dejected depressed despondent disgruntled disconsolate disheartened dismal doleful dolesome down

    Antonyms: comforting

Origin

From Middle English desolat(e). See Etymology 2 and -ate (adjective-forming suffix) for more.

Forms

more desolate most desolate

Derived

desolately desolateness desolater desolatory

Verb

  1. To deprive of inhabitants.
    • 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...
    • 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...
    • 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:

    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]...
    • 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...

    Synonyms: devastate ravage destroy annihilate aerosolize atomize benothing bewreck blot out blotto dash decompose demolish desolate diffuse disintegrate disperse dissolve eliminate eradicate erase exterminate extinguish extirpate

  3. To abandon or forsake something.
    • 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...
    • 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. -...
    • 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...

    Synonyms: give up relinquish vacate withsake

  4. To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.
    • 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 &...
    • Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words. - 1948, Alan Paton, chapter 36, in Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, page 271:

    Synonyms: deject get down aggrieve attrist begloom begrieve besorrow grieve pain bring down come down on contristate darken dash depress desolate dispirit engrieve forset grieven moan oppress repent rue

Origin

From Middle English desolaten (“to desolate”), from desolat(e) (“desolate”), from Latin dēsōlātus, perfect passive participle of dēsōlō (“to leave alone, make lonely, lay waste, desolate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix) for more.

Forms

desolates desolating desolated

Related

desolation