DESOLATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does desolation mean? 

• DESOLATION (noun)
  The noun DESOLATION has 4 senses:

1. the state of being decayed or destroyed

2. a bleak and desolate atmosphere

3. sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned

4. an event that results in total destruction

  Familiarity information: DESOLATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESOLATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being decayed or destroyed

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

desolation; devastation

Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):

deterioration; impairment (a symptom of reduced quality or strength)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "desolation"):

ruin; ruination (an irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction)

blight (a state or condition being blighted)

Derivation:

desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A bleak and desolate atmosphere

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

bareness; bleakness; desolation; nakedness

Context example:

the nakedness of the landscape

Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):

gloom; gloominess; glumness (an atmosphere of depression and melancholy)

Derivation:

desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

desolation; forlornness; loneliness

Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):

sadness; unhappiness (emotions experienced when not in a state of well-being)

Derivation:

desolate (leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch)

Sense 4

Meaning:

An event that results in total destruction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

desolation; devastation

Hypernyms ("desolation" is a kind of...):

ruin; ruination (an event that results in destruction)

Derivation:

desolate (cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly)

desolate (reduce in population)

 Context examples 

I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Was this desolation but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing tight around us?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

At first he cried softly to himself, then he cried loudly to the pitiless desolation that ringed him around; and for a long time after he was shaken by great dry sobs.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

But when Mr. Bhaer came, Jo neglected her playfellows, and dismay and desolation fell upon their little souls.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Dazed by the rapid succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and earnest curses sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof, he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Often their yelps drifted across the desolation, and once he saw three of them slinking away before his path.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)