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DESOLATION
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An event that results in total destruction
Synonyms:
desolation; devastation
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):
ruin; ruination (an event that results in destruction)
Derivation:
desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)
desolate (reduce in population)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned
Synonyms:
desolation; forlornness; loneliness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):
sadness; unhappiness (emotions experienced when not in a state of well-being)
Derivation:
desolate (leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A bleak and desolate atmosphere
Example:
the nakedness of the landscape
Synonyms:
bareness; bleakness; desolation; nakedness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):
gloom; gloominess; glumness (an atmosphere of depression and melancholy)
Derivation:
desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)
Sense 4
Meaning:
The state of being decayed or destroyed
Synonyms:
desolation; devastation
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):
deterioration; impairment (a symptom of reduced quality or strength)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "desolation"):
ruin; ruination (an irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction)
blight (a state or condition being blighted)
Derivation:
desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)
Context examples:
And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
“Wretch!” I said. “It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made.”
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em'ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses—naught but a tremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly dawning into his eyes.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands!
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
We had to take some of our provisions, too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and, so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even the sign of habitation.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better feeling.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Back and forth across the desolation drifted their howls, weaving the very air into a fabric of menace that was so tangible that he found himself, arms in the air, pressing it back from him as it might be the walls of a wind-blown tent.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
