Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Third-person singular simple present indicative form of desolate.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word desolates.

Examples

  • Proclaiming a National Fast Day in 1863, he suggested, in full prophetic voice, that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People. . .

    The Chosen Peoples Todd Gitlin 2010

  • Proclaiming a National Fast Day in 1863, he suggested, in full prophetic voice, that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People. . .

    The Chosen Peoples Todd Gitlin 2010

  • Proclaiming a National Fast Day in 1863, he suggested, in full prophetic voice, that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People. . .

    The Chosen Peoples Todd Gitlin 2010

  • He detonates distracted droves like dynamite, desolates communities with doublespeak.

    The Liar 2008

  • To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country.

    Think Progress » Santorum: We Found the WMD 2006

  • To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country.

    Think Progress » Santorum: We Found the WMD 2006

  • Oh very fair! smiling, cultivated, and green, like England, but far happier; for slavery which disgraces the New World, and poverty which desolates the Old, are nowhere to be seen.

    The Englishwoman in America 2007

  • That is doubtless a very fine art which desolates countries, destroys habitations, and in a common year causes the death of from forty to a hundred thousand men.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?

    A Brief History of Disbelief Sean 2005

  • She had smiled at it as such when Dorcas used to hint at it; but are there no castles in the clouds which we like to inhabit, although we know them altogether air-built, and whose evaporation desolates us?

    Wylder's Hand 2003

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.