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Showing results for desolate. Search instead for desolaterem.
Definitions
Trivia Time
Which setting is most likely to be described as desolate?

desolate

[des-uh-lit, des-uh-layt] / ˈdΙ›s Ι™ lΙͺt, ˈdΙ›s Ι™ΛŒleΙͺt /




Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Lando says a fire-safe perimeter doesn’t require turning properties into desolate gravel pits.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026

The Burning Man festival, which takes place each year in the desolate Black Rock Desert in Nevada about 120 miles north of Reno, kicked off on Aug. 30 and runs through Sept. 7.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

The drive on the highway by the Mediterranean in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, is scenic and, these days, desolate.

From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026

"A fire is devastating. People who want to come will come anyway. But it’s not the same seeing the green hills as seeing them completely desolate and black."

From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026

Shackleton knew—everyone knew—that they could not hold out on that desolate spot all winter.

From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong

But your misrepresentation which pained me most, in fact desolates me to the extent that I am unfit for work, is your statement that I weigh 200 Ib.

From Time Magazine Archive

The sudden death of Leontes' young son desolates him.

From Time Magazine Archive

He visits Barbara's soup kitchen shelter and proves with an open checkbook that he can bribe the poor and buy the Army, which desolates Barbara.

From Time Magazine Archive

Why should the sunbeam paint thy glittering clime, When the keen mildew desolates the field!

From The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius with some other poems by James Beattie

Contagion's blast destroys at Jove's command, And wasteful famine desolates the land.

From Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson

Hospital director Dr Muhammad Abu Salima has called on the WHO and the UN to help the medical teams and patients "leave this desolated place".

From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2023

She walked alone through its desolated main street, Khreschatyk.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2022

At the same time, Wallerstein could offer a mild reassurance: "It would certainly not be great, but it is not necessarily the desolated moonscape that people sometimes imagine it would be."

From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2022

Even in the depths of the pandemic — even when the world locked down, leaving billions isolated and desolated — there were those who danced.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 16, 2021

But there were not many black people visible on this day and Paradise had the look of a town desolated by plague or the rumor of plague.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

When D’Amore isn’t speaking — and for most of those three minutes and 40 seconds, she is silent — her body language is desolating.

From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2019

“The simple way...to put an end to the savage and desolating war now waged by the slaveholders, is to strike down slavery itself, the primal cause of that war.”

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

It sounds as if your mother is relatively young herself, so this is a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s which is even more desolating.

From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2015

It goes beyond documentary, drawing on a visionary stage vocabulary and creating individual stories that are both desolating and stirring.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 27, 2013

From a distant radio I heard the desolating music of a dance orchestra.

From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin


Vocabulary lists containing desolate

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