desolate meaning and examples

2025-09-04

Meaning

Desolate has two main uses:

  1. Adjective: Describes a place that is empty, barren, and without life or activity; or describes a person who feels very lonely, sad, or hopeless. Example: a desolate desert, a desolate widow.

  2. Verb (less common): To make a place empty or bleak; to make someone feel abandoned or hopeless. Example: The war desolated the countryside.

Grammar and Usage

  • Adjective:

    • Structure: desolate + noun (a desolate landscape, a desolate house)
    • Used with linking verbs: be desolate, feel desolate

  • Verb:

    • Transitive verb: to desolate sth/sb
    • Passive form often used: The city was desolated by floods.

Common Phrases

  • desolate landscape
  • desolate place
  • feel desolate
  • desolate building
  • desolate widow/child

Collocations

  • Adjective + noun: desolate desert, desolate town, desolate island
  • Verb + object: desolate the land, desolate the people
  • Adverb + adjective: utterly desolate, completely desolate

Examples

  1. The hikers crossed a desolate desert with no sign of life.
  2. After losing her husband, she felt utterly desolate.
  3. The abandoned house looked desolate in the moonlight.
  4. The war desolated the once-thriving villages.
  5. Standing alone in the vast field, he felt desolate and forgotten.
  6. The island was desolate, with no inhabitants or fresh water.
  7. The floods desolated the farmland, leaving it unusable.
  8. She gave him a desolate look after hearing the bad news.
  • Adjective: barren, bleak, empty, abandoned, forsaken, lonely, miserable
  • Verb: devastate, ruin, destroy, depopulate