Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Keep "desolating" when the sentence already sounds natural, when a synonym would add unintended emphasis, or when readers need the most familiar wording. A synonym should clarify or sharpen the message, not simply make the sentence look more varied.
If two options seem close, choose the one that best matches the audience and purpose of the sentence.
Choose a synonym only if it keeps the core idea of "desolating" intact in the sentence you are editing.
Check whether the replacement sounds more formal, casual, emotional, technical, or forceful than the original word.
Read the full sentence after the swap. Keep the synonym only when the sentence becomes clearer or more precise.
Review note: Synonym lists are ranked with lexical data and reviewed for practical writing value. Use the comparison notes, sentence evidence, and source labels together; a high-ranking synonym can still be wrong when the audience, register, or grammar changes.
After choosing a replacement for "desolating", read the sentence once for meaning and once for rhythm. The best synonym should feel natural in the full sentence, not only accurate in a word list.
If the synonym makes the sentence slower, vaguer, or more dramatic than intended, keep "desolating" or choose a simpler alternative from the closest-match group.
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6 total sentences available.
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.
Source: wiktionary
Since falling in love with Brake, and since their separation, these evening hours had become even more desolating, particularly since Grace knew he was somewhere in the house, pacing the library or the drawing room and talking about the things which interested not only him but her too, the unending fascination of colour, of trying to reshape nature, of seeing with the heart, while she sat trapped in a room under the roof mending the children's clothes and half-listening yet again to Dora's ill-determined plans to escape somehow from her servitude to find fame in the music halls.
Source: wiktionary
Roger's Death was a more intimate and a more desolating event than the death of Lytton.
Source: wiktionary
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.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
Closest matches include agonizing, baneful, bleak, blighting, calamitous.
Compare the replacement against real sentence context. This entry includes sample sentences so you can check tone, grammar, and meaning before swapping words.