desolate

1. 1.

   providing no shelter or sustenance

   “bare rocky hills”

   “barren lands”

   “the bleak treeless regions of the high Andes”

   “the desolate surface of the moon”

   “a stark landscape”

   Synonymsbarebarrenbleakstark

   Similarinhospitable
2. 2.

   crushed by grief

   “depressed and desolate of soul”

   “a low desolate wail”

   Similarinconsolable

Other forms of desolate

past tense

desolated·

present participle

desolating·

third person

desolates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about desolate

What does desolate mean?

desolate means "leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in desolate?

desolate has 3 syllables: des-o-late. The stress falls on "des". In IPA it is /ˈdɛsələt/.

What is another word for desolate?

Close synonyms include abandon, forsake, desert, depopulate, lay waste to. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is desolate a common word?

desolate is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.