Devastating

adj, verb

adj, verb ·4 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of devastate form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    Causing devastation.

    "Serious as was the flood damage in England, the bursting of some of the dykes on the coast of Holland resulted in an even more widespread and devastating inundation."

Adjective
  1. 1
    wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction wordnet
  2. 2
    physically or spiritually devastating; often used in combination wordnet
  3. 3
    making light of wordnet

Example

More examples

"A devastating earthquake hit the state capital."

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