desolate

The Burning Man festival, which takes place each year in the desolate Black Rock Desert in Nevada about 120 miles north of Reno, kicked off on Aug. 30 and runs through Sept. 7.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

The drive on the highway by the Mediterranean in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, is scenic and, these days, desolate.

From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026

A failed plan to bring in casinos left the area desolate after other businesses closed to make way for development that never emerged.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

"A fire is devastating. People who want to come will come anyway. But it’s not the same seeing the green hills as seeing them completely desolate and black."

From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026

I took the emptiness of Abuelo’s room inside myself, the cold, stippled walls desolate and hard.

From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago

But your misrepresentation which pained me most, in fact desolates me to the extent that I am unfit for work, is your statement that I weigh 200 Ib.

From Time Magazine Archive

The sudden death of Leontes' young son desolates him.

From Time Magazine Archive

He visits Barbara's soup kitchen shelter and proves with an open checkbook that he can bribe the poor and buy the Army, which desolates Barbara.

From Time Magazine Archive

Said Grass, "What is that sound So dismally profound, That detonates and desolates the air?"

From The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) by Marshall Pinckney Wilder

Fatal for us that beauty's torturing view, Living or dead alike which desolates our peace.

From The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch by Thomas Campbell

"This was the first time I realized what an enormous task it was to take a piece of desolated desert and turn it into a blooming oasis," Zer writes.

From Salon ● Nov. 20, 2024

Hospital director Dr Muhammad Abu Salima has called on the WHO and the UN to help the medical teams and patients "leave this desolated place".

From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2023

She walked alone through its desolated main street, Khreschatyk.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2022

Even in the depths of the pandemic — even when the world locked down, leaving billions isolated and desolated — there were those who danced.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 16, 2021

Still—I was desolated when he climbed away and headed back west.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

When D’Amore isn’t speaking — and for most of those three minutes and 40 seconds, she is silent — her body language is desolating.

From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2019

Unrelated begins in sociable aimlessness on an Italian holiday that becomes subtly desolating.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 18, 2019

“The simple way...to put an end to the savage and desolating war now waged by the slaveholders, is to strike down slavery itself, the primal cause of that war.”

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

It sounds as if your mother is relatively young herself, so this is a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s which is even more desolating.

From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2015

But the flowers, the smell, the movement of the leaves persist, rich, mesmerizing, desolating, infused with grief.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood