Desolating
adj, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 present participle and gerund of desolate form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 Causing anguish and despair.
"So when Mary's whole nature rose to meet this word of Jesus, and threw itself into the consent she gave, and turned her forcibly as it weer from Jesus to John, it was as if the whole anguish of the Crucifixion gained a new life, a fresh activity, a more potent bitterness, a more desolating power."
- 2 Destructive; ruinous.
"Why, that it was the cause of Pure Democracy which we were thus called on to support; of universal suffrage, Jacobin clubs, and a furious press; of revolutionary confiscation, democratic anarchy, and unbridled injustice; of the most desolating of tyrannies, the most ruinous of despotisms."
Example
More examples"So when Mary's whole nature rose to meet this word of Jesus, and threw itself into the consent she gave, and turned her forcibly as it weer from Jesus to John, it was as if the whole anguish of the Crucifixion gained a new life, a fresh activity, a more potent bitterness, a more desolating power."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.