DESOLATION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Desolation

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/dˌɛsəlˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Desolation n.

The act of desolating or laying waste; destruction of inhabitants; depopulation. "Unto the end of the war desolations are determined."

The state of being desolated or laid waste; ruin; solitariness; destitution; gloominess. "You would have sold your king to slaughter,... And his whole kingdom into desolation."

A place or country wasted and forsaken. "How is Babylon become a desolation!"

Synonyms: Waste; ruin; destruction; havoc; devastation; ravage; sadness; destitution; melancholy; gloom; gloominess.

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Etymology of 'Desolation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Desolation" Quotes from Famous Books

... Officer of the leading Destroyer leaned across the bridge-rails and stared round at the ring of barren islands encircling the great expanse of water into which they had passed, the naked, snow-powdered hills in the background: at the greyness and desolation of earth and sky ...

— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... looking, bearing his grief with Tagalog stoicism, greeted him with the finished courtesy of the Spanish tradition and led him up the precarious slatted steps into the house. It was a house of desolation. ...

— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... was greatly injured, but the cathedral was not materially hurt. A German who had been in Hamburg during the time of the great fire, assured an English reporter that the scene of desolation in that city on the morning after the conflagration was less heart-rending than that presented by the ruined quarters of Strasburg when the Prussian conquerors marched in. And yet the inhabitants, had General Ulrich been willing, would have still ...

— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... Es Shisban had changed his favour, for all the pride of his soul. Then came up Iblis (whom God curse!) and Tuhfeh rose to him and kissed his hands. He in turn kissed her hand and called down blessings on her and said, 'How deemest thou? Is [not] this place pleasant, for all its loneliness and desolation?' Quoth she, 'None may be desolate in this place;' and he said, 'Know that no mortal dare tread [the soil of] this place.' But she answered, 'I have dared and trodden it, and this is of the number of thy favours.' Then they brought tables and meats and viands ...

— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... slowly by, he faced this desolation with extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved ...

— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

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