devastate
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to destroy or ruin a large area or a lot of buildings.
to lay waste to a large area or to cause extensive physical destruction to infrastructure or natural environments.
Simple“The hurricane moved inland and devastated several small towns along the coast.”
In context“The forest fire devastated thousands of hectares of ancient woodland, leaving the local ecosystem in a state of total collapse.”
UsageThis is a transitive verb that requires a direct object, such as a city, region, or ecosystem.
- 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
to make someone feel very shocked, upset, or sad.
to overwhelm someone with grief, shock, or dismay. Often used in the passive voice to describe a person's emotional state.
Simple“She was devastated by the news that she didn't get the job.”
In context“The family was utterly devastated by the sudden loss, struggling to process the news in the weeks that followed.”
UsageCommonly appears in the passive form 'to be devastated by' something.
Teacher's tipWhile the physical sense is C1, the emotional sense is very common in B2 conversation to express extreme disappointment.
PitfallThe news was very devastated. The news was devastating.Use the '-ing' form (devastating) to describe the thing that causes the feeling, and the '-ed' form (devastated) to describe the person who has the feeling.
“In the 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, disease, famine and other misfortunes could devastate communities, and the dead became convenient scapegoats for shifting blame.”
“His decision to allow exploratory drilling in the area known as the Brazilian Equatorial Margin was heavily criticised by environmentalists, who raised concerns that any potential oil spills could devastate its ecosystem.”
Borrowed from Latin dēvastātus, perfect passive participle of dēvastō (“to lay waste, devastate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)); from dē- (augmentative prefix) + vastō (“to destroy, lay waste”). See vast. First attested in 1638.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.