devastate
verb
Simple meaning
To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dehvuhstaytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɛvəsteɪt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
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.
To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay
To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
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.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: 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.
In this sense, devastate is a very strong, expressive word and signals serious, lasting hurt rather than disappointment.
- Emotional tone
- Strongly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Strongly negative / painful
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
Devastate is emotionally heavy: it suggests deep or lasting feeling, not a passing mood, so it can overstate a small reaction.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use devastate
- “He was devastated by his grief when his son died.”verb
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.