ruin

1. 1.

   destroy completely; damage irreparably

   “You have ruined my car by pouring sugar in the tank!”

   “The tears ruined her make-up”

   Synonymsdestroy

   Narrowerburnlay waste toharrybreakvandalizedo a job onsubvertgetdevourrape
2. 2.

   destroy or cause to fail

   “This behavior will ruin your chances of winning the election”

   Broaderthwart

   Narrowerundobreakshipwreck
3. 3.

   reduce to bankruptcy

   “My daughter's fancy wedding is going to break me!”

   “The slump in the financial markets smashed him”

   Synonymsbankruptbreaksmash

   Broaderimpoverish
4. 4.

   reduce to ruins

   “The country lay ruined after the war”

   Broaderlay waste to
5. 5.

   deprive of virginity

   “This dirty old man deflowered several young girls in the village”

   Synonymsdeflower

   Broadercopulate
6. 6.

   fall into ruin

   Broaderdecay

Other forms of ruin

plural

ruins·

past tense

ruined·

present participle

ruining·

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 ruin

What does ruin mean?

ruin means "an irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction". That is the primary sense; the word has 12 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ruin?

ruin has 2 syllables: ru-in. The stress falls on "ru". In IPA it is /ˈɹuən/.

What is another word for ruin?

Close synonyms include ruination, dilapidation, ruination, downfall, ruination. 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 ruin a common word?

ruin is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.