DESOLATION • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Desolation

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/dˌɛsəlˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Desolation n.

The act of desolating or laying waste; destruction of inhabitants; depopulation. "Unto the end of the war desolations are determined."

The state of being desolated or laid waste; ruin; solitariness; destitution; gloominess. "You would have sold your king to slaughter,... And his whole kingdom into desolation."

A place or country wasted and forsaken. "How is Babylon become a desolation!"

Synonyms: Waste; ruin; destruction; havoc; devastation; ravage; sadness; destitution; melancholy; gloom; gloominess.

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Etymology of 'Desolation'

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Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Desolation" Quotes from Famous Books

... sufficiently subsided to permit of a wide view in every direction. The vista only served to increase our sense of loneliness and peril. We were a tiny chip tossed on the immensity of the waters, stretching away to the distant horizons. It was a vast scene of desolation, without another object to break its grim monotony—just those endless surges of gray-green water brightened by the touch of the sun. Again and again I swept my eyes about the circle in a vain effort to perceive something of hope; it was useless—we were alone ...

— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

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... French emperor from Algiers. The little man is dim with distance, eclipsed and swallowed up by the shadows and grotesque fragments of the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But his voice—thanks to the inimitable constructive art of the ancient architect, which, even in the desolation of at least thirteen centuries, has not lost its cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and fills the whole vast hollow with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank heaven, there is no danger of Roman resurrection here! The illusion is completely ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

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... suffered most severely. Several of the lodges had been altogether deserted, in consequence of the death of the proprietors; in which case the Indians frequently strip off the thick mats which form the outer covering of the wigwam, and leave the bare poles a perishing monument of desolation! This is only done when the head of the family dies. The property of which he has not otherwise disposed during his life, is then buried with him; and his friends continue, for a long period, to revisit the grave, and ...

— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

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... the embanked winding river, which ran sluggishly along the edge of the fen; and as the party looked out over the garden and across the fen upon that November night, they seemed to be ashore in the midst of a sea of desolation, which spread beneath the night sky away and ...

— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

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... on the omnibus or a tramp uphill, and we find ourselves abruptly in the village street. Then did each page as I turned it over bring some fresh recollection of one's unspeakable sense of newness and desolation; the haunting fear of doing something ludicrous; the morbid dread of chaff and of being "greened," which even in my time had, happily, supplanted the old terrors of being tossed in a blanket or roasted at a fire. Even less, I venture to think, was one thrilled ...

— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

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