MEANING
1. Widespread damage that leaves a place, community, or environment severely harmed or destroyed.
2. An overwhelming feeling of shock, grief, or distress after a terrible loss or event.
Use it for
describing the aftermath of extensive destruction; showing a landscape badly damaged by disaster; conveying the scale of ruin; depicting a community physically overwhelmed by catastropheConnects large-scale destruction with a separately labeled sense of overwhelming emotional aftermath. Writing functions: Ruin / Desolation.
Words that belong together
- widespread devastation
- leave devastation behind
- survey the devastation
On the page
At dawn, the survivors could finally see the devastation beyond the river.
The storm left devastation where the orchards had stood.
Her devastation was visible only when she tried to say his name.
Beneath his careful account of the accident lay a devastation he could not explain.
Word forms
- Base
- devastation
Usage notes
Usually uncountable in both principal senses: widespread devastation; emotional devastation. Avoid a devastation or regular plural devastations in ordinary use. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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