devastate
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.
Verb
- 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.
- Halifax in Canada was devastated by a ship exploding in 1917. SS Mont Blanc, a French vessel loaded with 2.9 kilotons of explosives, collided with the Imo. - 2022 August 24, Bruce Healey, “Wartime tunnel crash: a...
- To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
- To break beyond recovery or repair so that the only options are abandonment or the clearing away of useless remains (if any) and starting over.
- To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay
Origin
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.