Verb
devastate (third-person singular simple present devastates, present participle devastating, simple past and past participle devastated)
- 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.
2022 August 24, Bruce Healey, “Wartime tunnel crash: a miraculous escape”, in RAIL, number 964, page 53: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.
- To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
- 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.
- To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay
Translations
to ruin many or all things over a large area
- Albanian: please add this translation if you can
- Armenian: please add this translation if you can
- Azerbaijani: viran etmək
- Bulgarian: опустошавам (bg) (opustošavam)
- Catalan: devastar (ca)
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: 摧毀/摧毁 (zh) (cuīhuǐ), 破壞/破坏 (zh) (pòhuài), 蹂躪/蹂躏 (zh) (róulìn)
- Danish: ødelægge (da)
- Esperanto: please add this translation if you can
- Estonian: please add this translation if you can
- Finnish: tehdä (suurta) tuhoa (+ allative), hävittää (fi), tuhota (fi), mullistaa (fi)
- French: dévaster (fr)
- Galician: devastar
- Georgian: please add this translation if you can
- German: verwüsten (de), verheeren (de)
- Greek:
- Ancient: λυμαίνομαι (lumaínomai), ἐρημόω (erēmóō)
- Hungarian: elpusztít (hu)
- Irish: slad (ga)
- Italian: devastare (it)
- Japanese: 破壊する (はかいする, hakai suru)
- Latin: vastō, dēvastō, populor
- Latvian: please add this translation if you can
- Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål: ødelegge (no)
- Polish: dewastować (pl) impf, zdewastować (pl) pf
- Portuguese: devastar (pt)
- Romanian: devasta (ro)
- Russian: опустоша́ть (ru) impf (opustošátʹ), опустоши́ть (ru) pf (opustošítʹ), разоря́ть (ru) impf (razorjátʹ), разори́ть (ru) pf (razorítʹ)
- Slovak: please add this translation if you can
- Spanish: devastar (es)
- Swedish: ödelägga (sv)
- Turkish: please add this translation if you can
- Ukrainian: спусто́шувати impf (spustóšuvaty), спусто́шити pf (spustóšyty), пусто́шити impf (pustóšyty)
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Further reading
- “devastate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “devastate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “devastate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.