Devastate

//ˈdev.ə.stæɪt// verb

verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.

    "Halifax in Canada was devastated by a ship exploding in 1917. SS Mont Blanc, a French vessel loaded with 2.9 kilotons of explosives, collided with the Imo."

  2. 2
    overwhelm or overpower wordnet
  3. 3
    To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
  4. 4
    cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly wordnet
  5. 5
    To break beyond recovery or repair so that the only options are abandonment or the clearing away of useless remains (if any) and starting over.
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  1. 6
    To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay

Synonyms

All synonyms
plunderabashblastbring to ruinchagrincondemn

Example

More examples

"The news will certainly devastate him."

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin dēvastātus, perfect passive participle of dēvastō (“to lay waste, devastate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)); from dē- (augmentative prefix) + vastō (“to destroy, lay waste”). See vast. First attested in 1638.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.