desolation

/dɛsəˈleɪʃɪn/

/dɛsəˈleɪʃən/

Other forms: desolations

Desolation is emptiness and hopelessness. It can describe a poor, dirty, treeless town or a broken heart.

Desolation is depressing and bleak. People arriving at the scenes of natural disasters, like tornadoes, often speak about the desolation around them. They usually are talking about the destruction, but they also implying a sense of emptiness and hopelessness. Other times desolation describes bleak, ugly landscapes: cold, snowy, lonely towns in New Hampshire or hot, dusty, empty towns in Nevada. You know desolation when you see it, because you feel hollow and lonely inside.

Definitions of desolation

1. noun

   sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned
   synonyms: forlornness, loneliness

   type of:

   sadness, unhappiness

   emotions experienced when not in a state of well-being
2. noun

   the state of being decayed or destroyed
   synonyms: devastation

   types:

   ruin, ruination

   an irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction

   blight

   a state or condition being blighted

   type of:

   deterioration, impairment

   a symptom of reduced quality or strength
3. noun

   a bleak and desolate atmosphere
   synonyms: bareness, bleakness, nakedness

   type of:

   gloom, gloominess, glumness

   an atmosphere of depression and melancholy
4. noun

   an event that results in total destruction
   synonyms: devastation

   type of:

   ruin, ruination

   an event that results in destruction