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Devastate   /dˈɛvəstˌeɪt/   Listen
Devastate

verb
(past & past part. devastated; pres. part. devastating)
1.
Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly.  Synonyms: desolate, lay waste to, ravage, scourge, waste.
2.
Overwhelm or overpower.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Devastate" Quotes from Famous Books



... had taken possession of Marcy's mother—that possibly the Union forces might ascend the Roanoke River, capture Plymouth, and devastate the surrounding country—now took possession of Marcy also. Northern soldiers had not yet been given an opportunity to show the merciful way in which the inhabitants of captured cities were to be treated during the war, and Marcy may be pardoned for looking into the future ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... the errors or defects of the better characters. Good, in the widest sense, seems thus to be the principle of life and health in the world; evil, at least in these worst forms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it violently, and, in the struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers to the plant and to the mine. The injured elements say, 'Not in us;' And night and day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;' And haughtily return us stare for stare. For we invade them impiously for gain; We devastate them unreligiously, And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due; But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich results of the divine consents Of man and earth, of world beloved and ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... is good for them to reflect on their sins at all times and under any circumstance. Nowadays you would have your well-water analysed and ask what the Sanitary Inspector had been about. Or, again, if a fire were to devastate our little town, we should not smite our breasts in the manner of those same forefathers, and attribute it to what there is amongst us of sloth and self-indulgence, to God's wrath upon our drinking ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... natural than that he should most ardently long to talk with the older schoolboys about the wonders of the real world, where people ride in coaches, devastate cities, marry princesses, and stay up in the evening till after 10 o'clock—even if it isn't a birthday. And then at the table one helps one's self, and may select just whatever one wants to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli


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