desolate

That has created a desolate no man’s land, roughly 20 miles wide and snaking for hundreds of miles along the front lines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 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 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 is the novel’s desolate mood, finally, and Ms. McPherson’s evocation of a melancholy landscape that anchor both her plot and her heroine.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

She was left with the desolate certainty that her father would have done again what he did fifteen years ago.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

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

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

"Oh, of course, of course, poor old thing," says she, unable this time, however, to hide the quaver that desolates her voice.

From April's Lady A Novel by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

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

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

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

Once again I had the desolating sense of having all along ignored what was finest in him.

From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles