desolate

Along a desolate stretch of California desert highway, next to a ramshackle home, law enforcement officials on Wednesday dug for a second day in a search for bodies.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026

While it might look desolate now, the hope is that some insects and plant species will eventually colonise the ground either sides of the tracks.

From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026

A failed plan to bring in casinos left the area desolate after other businesses closed to make way for development that never emerged.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 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

It was a longer walk than I’d expected, and it soon took me off the main road and through some particularly desolate country near Mount Cataract.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

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

The sudden death of Leontes' young son desolates him.

From Time Magazine Archive

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 shock of the contest upturns Society and desolates the Land.

From The Great Conspiracy, Volume 4 by John Alexander Logan

That the putrefied weeds have poisoned the air, and the poisoned air causes the yellow fever, that desolates these beautiful countries.

From Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

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

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

Already desolated by the empty nest, Alice is also distraught about their dog, Maebelle, a tiny dachshund-Chihuahua mutt who escaped in Riverside Park.

From New York Times ● Aug. 18, 2020

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

As the actors take up their places, a desolating video begins to play.

From The Guardian ● May 11, 2013

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

From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin