lay waste to

Questions about lay waste to

What does lay waste to mean?

lay waste to means "cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly".

What is another word for lay waste to?

Close synonyms include waste, devastate, desolate, ravage, scourge. 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 lay waste to a common word?

lay waste to is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.