devastate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin dēvastātus, perfect passive participle of dēvastō (“to lay waste, devastate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)); from dē- (augmentative prefix) + vastō (“to destroy, lay waste”). See vast. First attested in 1638.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈdev.ə.stæɪt/

Verb

devastate (third-person singular simple present devastates, present participle devastating, simple past and past participle devastated)

1. 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.

2. To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
3. 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.
4. To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay

Synonyms

• (to lay waste) decimate (sometimes proscribed); destroy; raze (to structures); ruin

Derived terms

• devastated (adjective)
• devastating
• devastative

Related terms

• devastation
• devastavit

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)

Further reading

• “devastate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “devastate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “devastate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Ido

Verb

devastate

1. adverbial present passive participle of devastar

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

devastate

1. inflection of devastare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

devastate f pl

1. feminine plural of devastato

Anagrams

• destavate, detestava

Latin

Verb

dēvāstāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of dēvāstō

Spanish

Verb

devastate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of devastar combined with te