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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Desolating

Desolate \Des"o*late\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Desolated; p. pr. & vb. n. Desolating.]

  1. To make desolate; to leave alone; to deprive of inhabitants; as, the earth was nearly desolated by the flood.

  2. To lay waste; to ruin; to ravage; as, a fire desolates a city.

    Constructed in the very heart of a desolating war.
    --Sparks.

Wiktionary
desolating

vb. (present participle of desolate English)

Usage examples of "desolating".

But the Major is dead, and the family in John Street, New York, sees the face of Cain in its desolating loss.

Fate has once again worked out her old, old plot, which is fresh and desolating to every new victim.

It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil.

A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.

It had been a cry of pain and despair—an animal's cry, but desolating none the less.

Some of the Old Ones looked back over their lonely destiny, which had turned into nothing but a long, desolating struggle to survive, and—well, some of them rebelled.

Exposed by the ebb tide, the sun-caressed slime glitters and shimmers, so that if the observer is content to stand still for a few moments he shall see myriads of obscure activities, graceful and uncouth, of the existence of which he has not previously dreamt and among which his footsteps make a desolating track.

Here we have direct evidence of the desolating effects of the interference of man.

The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at the South, had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we might say, demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them.

Added to the imperfect nature of the rations issued to the Federal prisoners, the difficulties of their situation were at times greatly increased by the sudden and desolating Federal raids in Virginia, Georgia, and other States, which necessitated the sudden transportation from Richmond and other points threatened of large bodies of prisoners, without the possibility of much previous preparation.

They have convinced me that, however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking in the depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects.

Time, which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human pride, seems to have passed lightly over this little scene of poetry and love, and to have withheld his desolating hand.