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

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

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority did not dispute that assessment but defended its method for counting an area “unique because of the vast, often desolate terrain.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 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

“I wish you were....Sometimes one is desolate, there are moments when one is in hell, as it were, but—it also brings with it other and better things.”

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman

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

It desolates me to think that I cannot offer these apologies to Mr. Vantine in person.

From The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet A Detective Story by Burton Egbert Stevenson

The grain Aphis, in certain years, desolates our wheat fields.

From Our Common Insects A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses by A. S. (Alpheus Spring) Packard

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

A man in his late 40s and his son, about 10, both unnamed, are walking a desolated road.

From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2021

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

Still—I was desolated when he climbed away and headed back west.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

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

Unrelated begins in sociable aimlessness on an Italian holiday that becomes subtly desolating.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 18, 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

But the flowers, the smell, the movement of the leaves persist, rich, mesmerizing, desolating, infused with grief.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood