Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏜️ Empty and bleak 😔 Very lonely 🏚️ To ruin completely 🚶 To abandon
to desolate

to desolate

8.2
Leave someone who needs you alone and helpless
  • verb
  • /ˈdɛsəˌleɪt/
translation icon : abandonar
  • He felt completely desolated after his friends abandoned him during the toughest times.

Examples

  • She feared her friends would desolate her just when she needed support the most.

  • He could never forgive his father, who had desolated the family when times grew hard.

  • The villagers felt betrayed when their leader desolated them during the crisis.

  • Don't desolate your friends when they need you the most.

  • He desolated her with his harsh words.

  • Leaving her pet at the shelter made him feel desolated and guilty for not being there to care for it.

  • When he realized they had desolated the project without consultation, he felt betrayed and alone.

Synonyms

to abandon
vsto desolate
773 3.1

Leave someone or something behind permanently and without care

is about leaving a dependent person and causing helplessness rather than mere permanence
to desert
vsto desolate
219 4.2

To leave people or a place when you are needed

is used for leaving a dependent person and causing helplessness
to forsake
vsto desolate
38 6.9

To leave someone who needs your help

is broader covering leaving someone who depends on you not only at worst moments

Antonyms

to support
753 1.4

Give money or other help so a person can live and study

to care for
347 1.0

Look after a sick or injured person and give them needed help

How Abandoned

to forsake
38 6.9
to desolate
8.2
to desert
219 4.2
to leave
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

desolate infinitive
desolated past
desolated past participle
desolating present participle
desolates third person singular

Morphology

desolate = de + solate

The meaning 'to abandon or forsake (a person)' is a metaphorical extension from making solitary and is not transparently predictable from the morphemes for an average learner.

Etymology

Desolate comes from Latin de- ('completely') and solus ('alone'), so it once meant to 'leave someone alone'. A helpful way to remember is to imagine a person left 'all alone', which is why to desolate someone is to abandon them.