desolate
29
6.8
- adjective
- /ˈdɛsəlɪt/
:
desolado
- The abandoned house stood in a desolate landscape, surrounded by nothing but barren fields.
- a desolate place
- a desolate landscape
- remote and desolate
But it's just like this desolate, gross, misty place.
- But it's just like this desolate, gross, misty place.
- Parking lot was desolate and a little creepy.
- A huge wreck of stones on a lone and desolate spot.
- And, you know, most people, not all people, but most people from, you know, desolate areas, they think every American is a millionaire.
- Others were were on the cold wind swept High Plains of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and two of the most desolate places in California.
- She would go out to like desolate beaches or wide wastelands with a bunch of nude models and shoot them in apocalyptic scenarios.
Examples
-
Most of Rajasthan, a large state in western India, is a desolate and devastated landscape.
Academic text (2007) -
I finally tracked down the original in a desolate back corner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Academic text (2004) -
I kept following him until he reached a desolate area.
-
This must be the most desolate place on the earth.
-
People always say, "What a terrible place for them to live, so desolate and so out of reach."
-
Parking lot was desolate and a little creepy.
-
Located in a remote and desolate area, the institution was different from what they had pictured.
Academic text (2011) -
A desolate, dry planet with vast deserts.
-
The camera pans the empty, desolate landscape of oil pumps, dirt roads, and a solitary billboard.
Fiction book (1995) -
Lightning splits the black-and-white sky, revealing a single shattered oak in a desolate landscape.
Fiction book (1998)
Synonyms
217
2.2
Not covered or protected, showing the plain surface
89
1.6
A place with no people or animals present
57
4.6
Land where plants and animals cannot grow
44
3.8
A gloomy, boring time that makes you feel sad or tired
22
4.8
Very plain and empty with no decoration
20
4.0
A place with no people living there
16
4.9
An open empty place with little shelter or plants
14
7.5
A place or building that is abandoned and in very bad condition from lack of use
8
4.4
Too harsh for plants or animals to survive there
2
2.8
Left empty and not used, often by people who lived there
1
3.0
A place that people no longer live in or use
1
6.3
Not interesting and without energy or life
A place with no people in it
A dark, gloomy place that makes people feel afraid or uncomfortable
A place that has lost most of its people, often after war or disease
Antonyms
How Empty
Surface Forms
Morphology
desolate = de + solate
The sense 'empty, bleak (of a place)' is a relatively direct physical meaning of the historical formation, but because 'solate' is not a productive modern base the decomposition is only partly helpful to learners.
Etymology
Desolate comes from Latin de- ('completely') and solus ('alone'), so it means 'completely alone'. That's why a desolate place is empty, bleak and without shelter or life.