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Devastate   Listen
verb
Devastate  v. t.  (past & past part. devastated; pres. part. devastating)  To lay waste; to ravage; to desolate. "Whole countries... were devastated."
Synonyms: To waste; ravage; desolate; destroy; demolish; plunder; pillage.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Devastate" Quotes from Famous Books



... men to believe in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of Bruyeres-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... poisoning by drinking raw Tucupi, the juice of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but sometimes intentionally through spite when stray oxen devastate the plantations of the poorer people. The juice, is almost certain to be drunk if cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef in the town. Although every one knows it cannot be wholesome, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... corporation. Banked and covered as it was in the ashes of the after years, there was the old living spark of humanity in David Drennen. Ygerne Bellaire came in time to fan it into a warming glow. The fire which should come from it should be her affair. It would cheer with its warmth; or it should devastate with its flames. The spark, fanned into love's fire, had in an instant sent its flickering light throughout the darker places of a ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... intense heat so near the surface over a large tract of country was very impressive, and I could hardly divest myself of the notion that some terrible catastrophe might at any moment devastate the country. Yet it is probable that all these apertures are really safety-valves, and that the inequalities of the resistance of various parts of the earth's crust will always prevent such an accumulation of force as would be required to upheave and overwhelm any extensive ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... energies are being simply, with his own dull consent, "melted down for the tallow trade," and that he himself is by way of being on a far more perilous margin than that of any one of the gently depressed spirits who devastate his days, and command him to create for them,—not energy, purpose, will,—but, instead, external conditions in which they may more luxuriously enjoy their romantic languor and their comforting consciousness ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... Peas often suffer badly from the attacks of Peronospora viciae, which is the cause of Pea Mould, yet the most deadly foe to Peas, especially late Peas, is a fungus of a totally different character. To such an extent does the Pea Blight sometimes devastate the later Peas, particularly in dry summers, that the whole crop is in some gardens completely annihilated. The name of the fungus of the Pea Blight or Mildew is Erysiphe Martii. Its attack is often made suddenly; ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... consumed. As soon as they have acquired sufficient strength they abandon their birth-place, destroy all kinds of vegetation that comes in their way, and direct their course to the cultivated fields, which they desolate until the period when their wings appear. They then take flight in order to devastate ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... We must injure Ourselves. God will not injure us. We invite our own miseries. God does not send them. The evils and sorrows that afflict mankind are of mankind's own making. Even in natural catastrophes, which ruin cities and devastate countries, it is well to remember that Nature, which is the MATERIAL EXPRESSION of the mind of God, will not tolerate too long a burden of human iniquity. Nature destroys what is putrescent; she covers it up with fresh earth ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... manipulators. The "snipers" lay alert, invisible, and ready when they saw a head to hit it. It was alleged that the polls in which the marksmen were interested had the Red Cross—a useful talisman—waving over them, the better to enable the gunners to devastate Kimberley with impunity. Whether this was true is not certain; at any rate, the finesse did not deceive; every cranium that loomed upon the horizon received a volley. Sometimes the gun would be fixed partially ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... some new tyranny. While the fall of Hebert is proclaimed as the triumph of freedom, all the citizens are disarmed by way of collateral security; and at the instant he is accused by the Convention of atheism and immorality,* a militant police is sent forth to devastate the churches, and punish those who are detected in observing the Sabbath—"mais plutot souffrir que mourir, c'est la devise des Francois." ["To suffer rather than die is the motto ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... fray, With brandished colt, comes Felix Holt, all of the Modern day. And Silas Lapham's six-shooter is cocked: the Colonel's spry! There spurs the wary Egoist, defiance in his eye; There Zola's ragged regiment comes, with dynamite in hand, And Flaubert's crew of country doctors devastate the land. On Robert Elsmere Friar Tuck falls with his quarter-staff, Nom De! to see the clerics fight might make the sourest laugh! They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown, So keep us good St. Genevieve, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... They are mischievous in the extreme, moreover, and do great damage, seemingly wantonly, to any crops or garden patches that they may find in their neighborhood. Usually the natives are too terrified to offer any resistance and placidly allow the animal to devastate to the bent of his will. The cliff dwellers, however, had suffered so much from the depredations of this particular animal that they were determined to drive him out of their neighborhood, and that was the real ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... and understand whether a calamity will come, a famine or wild beasts, floods or drought; whether there will be abundance of grain or dearth; whether the wicked will rule the world; whether locusts will devastate the land; whether the fruits will drop from the trees unripe; whether boils will afflict men; whether wars will prevail, or diseases or plagues among men and cattle; whether good is resolved upon in heaven, or evil; whether blood will flow, and the death-rattle of the slain ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... imposing one taxation after another, or billeting a troop of soldiers upon us, who in one hour empty our coffers and purses, and do not quit as long as we have a farthing left, and in addition, by way of thanks, burn and devastate house and home, and outrage and kill ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... 1914, asking nothing less than what Shylock asked from Antonio—his life. To punish Serbia, Germany made an alliance with the Bulgars, and sent her troops and her iron—the best product of their culture—to destroy the Serbian state, to devastate the Serbian country, and to take more than a million of human lives for the life of the Austrian Crown Prince. And this has been done with an unprecedented perfection. And this destructive deed has been praised with eloquent ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... company of elephants in the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... not devastate the land of Zunire, nor the dwellings which are belonging to the Governor ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... and sea-gull fly screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf Skoetkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron chains fastened across the stream: "Thou art caught, Oluf Haraldson,[H] caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... is better understood, medical science seems obliged to accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the cinders and ashes of a general desolation. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... Vitebsk are full of endless lines of troops, squadrons of cavalry in close formation, and enormous baggage trains. The Russians know that their freedom is in danger; they burn their own towns and villages, devastate their own provinces, and retire little by little, as they did a hundred years earlier when Charles XII. invaded Russia. At length there is a battle at Moscow, and the French army enters the town. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... to tell you what this could mean to American security," he went on. "If enemy subs slipped through our continental defenses, their missiles could devastate the United States with scarcely an instant's warning! The whole country's been rocked by the announcement. An official comment by our Defense Department ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... lie in many places, and the air is thick and heavy. We shall not go down there until we need. When we must descend we shall find an abundance of maize, and fruits of all sorts. The savages kill the people they find on the estates, but do not destroy the crops or devastate the fields. They are wise enough to know that these are useful to them, and though they are too lazy to work themselves they appreciate the good things ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... sport under other circumstances, while a profusion of various kinds of flowers afforded satisfaction to the eye, in strong contrast to the bare and barkless trunks of trees riven by the frequent storms that devastate these hills. In one place a most gruesome sight was met with. Under a small tree beside a tiny stream stood a three-legged cooking-pot, and round it lay three skeletons, with a scattering of shrapnel bullets to silently tell the story of the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... silence he followed his guide, often feeling disposed to try and shoot one or other of the nocturnal birds that flitted silently by, or one of the great fruit bats that, longer in their spread of wings than rooks, flew in flocks on their way to devastate some ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... size-change principle of the space-globe? And Groff had gotten the secret. An abnormality here—Groff with the power of evil latent within him, tempted by this opportunity. What could he have hoped to accomplish? Of what use to him would it be to devastate this little realm? Bitter irony swept Lee. Of what use was vast personal power to anyone? Those madmen of Earth's history, with their lust for conquest—of what use could the conquest be to them? And yet they ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... the fame of the late lord, who lived as though he were a fiend let loose from hell to devastate mankind. The glory of the family! And how will he maintain it? At racecourses, in betting-clubs, among loose women, with luscious wines, never doing one stroke of work for man or God, consuming and never producing, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... years of age, to slay a mad white elephant with a single stroke of his fist. Many similar feats were performed during the boyhood of this Persian Hercules, who longed to fight when the realm was finally invaded by the Tartar chief Afrasiab and war began to devastate the land. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... immense stir of men and interests and things which makes Paris at once a paradise and a hell, quite quelled Lisbeth Fischer. She gave up all idea of rivalry and comparison with her cousin after feeling her great superiority; but envy still lurked in her heart, like a plague-germ that may hatch and devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool is opened in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds; but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly. His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his bowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo looked ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... the army from Britain,[119] Vitellius, who now 61 had an immense force and vast resources at his disposal, decided on an invasion by two routes under two separate generals. Fabius Valens was to lure the Gauls to his standard, or, if they refused, to devastate their country, and then invade Italy by way of the Cottian Alps.[120] Caecina was to follow the shorter route and descend into Italy over the Pennine Pass.[121] Valens' column comprised the Fifth legion with its 'eagle',[122] and some ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... came to devastate the enchanting loveliness of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic centuries, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps, at a certain region called ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... housewives, petite. A good cook can do anything. Sainte Marthe entertained the blessed Lord in her own home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the country until Sainte Marthe was ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... the slave trade were based on a purely economic motive—the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the American people helped to depopulate villages,—to devastate, burn, murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an impassable ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... incessant climbers and foragers, peering into crannies, pounding here and there to make the grubs stir in their hiding places, jabbing and prying with their beaks, and chiseling out all kinds of larvae, grubs, and borers that would, if permitted to live and multiply, soon devastate the timber and fruit trees and make this world a desert indeed. True, the other feathered clamberers and carpenters are fully as useful, but depend upon it, the nuthatches do their share in ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... speculate upon the probability whether a great war would ever devastate western Europe again, and it was very evident to White that he wanted very much to persuade himself against that idea. It was too disagreeable for him to think it probable. The paper was dated 1910. It was in October, 1914, that White, who was still working upon the laborious uncertain ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... plants. He can make foodstuffs out of sewage; he can entrap the nitrogen in the air and use it to raise wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter, his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch. The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem as complete an anachronism as ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... not wanted him to die—at least not to die like that.... People said at the time that it was the hot weather—his own family had said so: he had never quite got over his attack of pneumonia, and the sudden rise of temperature—one of the fierce "heat-waves" that devastate New York in summer—had probably affected his brain: the doctors said such cases were not uncommon.... She had worn black for a few weeks—not quite mourning, but something decently regretful (the dress-makers were beginning to provide a special garb for such cases); and even ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... in despair. Thiers, putting his senile fingers in the porridge, stirred a ferment that had not even germinated since the guillotine towered in the Place de la Concorde and the tumbrils rattled through the streets. He did not know what he was stirring. The same impulse that possessed Gladstone to devastate trees animated Thiers. He stirred the dangerous mess because he liked to stir, nothing more. But from that hell's broth the crimson spectre of the Commune was to rise, when the smoke of Sedan had drifted ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... something still to live for; and, if we are able to abandon the sentimental view and look facts in the face—as many anointed chaplains in Europe are doing—science not only eliminates typhoid but is able to prevent those terrible diseases that devastate armies and nations. And science is no longer confined to the physical but has invaded the social kingdom, is able to weave a juster fabric into the government of peoples. On all sides we are beginning to embrace the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... great country, your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley—the senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness—they are magnificas! ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... operations immediately succeeding Fredericksburg. Picket fighting; cavalry skirmishes, severe but fruitless; and temporary raids of the enemy to devastate the country around the rear of their army, and to penetrate into that beyond their lines, occupying the winter and early spring. But there was full leisure for the people to look upon the ugliest features of the war. Fredericksburg was a ruin, riddled with shot and shell, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... dependent on imported food, mainly from France. Light industry features sugar and rum production. Most manufactured goods and fuel are imported. Unemployment is especially high among the young. Hurricanes periodically devastate the economy. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... diligently working at Barbara's morning dress I am forced to hear things which sadden me deeply. The chaplain reads the papers aloud to us, and I see that the republic loses daily in power and dignity; the neighboring powers invade it under divers pretexts; their troops pillage and devastate the country, while the Government refuses to interfere.... I dare not think of the future, but my father says we must enjoy the present. All speak in subdued tones of the woes which threaten Poland, and then dance and drink; the joyous festivals and banquets would deceive one into thinking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the cause of a great share of the crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see a man spending faster than he earns, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... soon to play a thrilling part in the world's history; to change the aspect of the heavens everywhere; to attract the wondering gaze of nearly all nations, and to devastate its immediate neighbourhood—is of volcanic origin, and, at the time we write of (1883) was beginning to awaken from a long, deep slumber of two hundred years. Its last explosion occurred in the year 1680. Since that date it had remained quiet. But now ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... holy water from sad eyes) Back to God's sea, from which all rivers rise, Let me convey, not blood from wounded hearts, Nor poison which the upas tree imparts. When over flowery vales I leap with joy, Let me not devastate them, nor destroy, But rather leave them fairer to the sight; Mine be the lot to comfort and delight. And if down awful chasms I needs must leap, Let me not murmur at my lot, but sweep On bravely to the end without one fear, Knowing that He who planned my ways stands near. Love sent me forth, ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... in Nature. We might well ask why the myriads of bacteria do not devastate the earth with their marvelous rapidity of propagation. So indeed they might, were it not for the winds, rains, melting snow and ice which scatter them far and wide, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... scarcely an acre, and it should be enclosed. Flat slaty stones, suitable for wall, lie around in abundance, brought down by the avalanche, which a year or two ago endangered the station, but happily did no more damage than destroy the powder-house and devastate the burial-ground. Kegs of powder and tombstones were carried far out on to the ice of the bay. Most of the latter were recovered unbroken and replaced, and among them the one of which we are in search. Here it is, a simple square slate ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... a spectacle provided for her amusement, without rancour, but equally without pity. Beatrice was contemptuous. What right, said her countenance, had a servant-girl to covet jewellery? And how pitiable the spirit that prompted to a filching of half-crowns! For the criminals of finance, who devastate a thousand homes, Miss French had no small admiration; crimes such as the present were ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... lonely pleasaunce of the upper world, on a sheltered slope of ever-burning Gedeh, quiescent now save for the blue curl of sulphurous smoke, which gives perpetual warning of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate the surrounding country. Subterranean activity increases during the rainy season, and tremors of earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of those unused to the perils of existence on this thin crust of Mother Earth, for Java's teeming soil and population rest upon an ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... mind! Still as we gaze on that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege; and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege in hallowing the very spot which they devastate. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... think he seemed very eager to catch it, as we went through the busy streets in the warmth of the evening, for it was hot, as it sometimes is in pleasant April, before the withering east winds of the "merry month" have come to devastate the land and sweep sickly people off the face of the earth. We went slowly through the moving crowds to the station, into the wartesaal, where he left me while he went to take my ticket. I sat in the same corner of the same sofa as before, and to this day I ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... machine. The acquired sweets were wrapped in a paper covering, on which different notices were printed, the majority were to this effect: "Remember the shameful Baralong outrage, in punishment for which our airships shall devastate the Eastern Counties of England and destroy London." We showed this to our guards, who firmly believed that it would shortly come to pass, and could not understand our amusement. A few minutes out from Cologne, as we went rushing over a long iron bridge, we celebrated ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... democratic constitution so far as to submit, when their assembly would have been justified by the exigency of the crisis. But while the Athenians remained inactive behind their walls, the cavalry was sent out on skirmishing expeditions, and a large fleet was sent to the Peloponnesus with orders to devastate the country in retaliation. The Spartans, after having spent thirty or forty days in Attica, retired for want of provisions. AEgina was also invaded, and the inhabitants were expelled and sent to the Peloponnesus. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Chu-bu knew no time-limit: he was furious all that night, and next day he was furious still. The situation called for immediate miracles. To devastate the city with a pestilence and kill all his priests was scarcely within his power, therefore he wisely concentrated such divine powers as he had in commanding a little earthquake. "Thus," thought Chu-bu, "will I reassert myself as the only god, and ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... and charitable and devout and virtuous testament or will, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Bossolton; "and in a time when anarchy with gigantic strides does devastate and devour and harm the good old customs of our ancestors and forefathers, and tramples with its poisonous breath the Magna Charta and the glorious revolution, it is beautiful, ay, and sweet, mark you, Mrs. Merrylack, to ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... judge of other women's husbands, though," said Mrs. Wolfstein to Lady Cardington. "That child is going to devastate London." ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... had I a river, I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'Free Fishing' spells no fishing at all. This presses most hardly on the artisan who fishes fair, a member of a large class with whose pastime only a churl would wish to interfere. We are now compelled, if we would catch fish, to seek ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... before, they would all fall who were against him." Some authorities also mention a traitor in Brian's camp, who had informed the Danes that his forces had been weakened by the absence of his son Donough, whom he had sent to devastate Leinster. Malachy has the credit of this piece of treachery, with other ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... Petrucci being still in Siena, and Cesare's patience exhausted, he issued an ultimatum from his camp at Sartiano in which he declared that if, within twenty-four hours, Petrucci had not been expelled from the city, he would loose his soldiers upon Siena to devastate the territory, and would treat every inhabitant "as a Pandolfo and ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... What in Zen would you have to gamble, captain? The whole Haer family fortunes are tied up. Hovercraft is out for blood. They won't be satisfied with a token victory and a negotiated compromise. They'll devastate us. Thousands of mercenaries killed, with all that means in indemnities; millions upon million in expensive military equipment, most of which we've had to hire and will have to recompensate for. Can ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... well that there should be an opposition. And how can there be an opposition without some subject for grumbling,—some matter on which a minister may be attacked? No one really thought that the Prussians and French combined would invade our shores and devastate our fields, and plunder London, and carry our daughters away into captivity. The state of the funds showed very plainly that there was no such fear. But a good cry is a very good thing,—and it is always well to rub up the officials of the Admiralty by a little wholesome ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... of Asia to devastate Europe, at length turned Christian, adopted a Slavic speech, and entered the family of European nations. The Magyars, who followed them, also made their way into the fellowship of Christendom. Quite the opposite has been the case with the Turks. Preserving their Asiatic language ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... azarae) of South America enters farms to devastate the poultry yards. When he is discovered he runs away, but is soon caught, and blows from sticks rain upon him. Seeing that he cannot escape correction he seeks at least to save his life. Letting his head fall and straightening his inert legs he receives ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... children live? You are trembling like geese, you do not know what is good to do: no one gives an answer to the enemy, and our desolated land is abandoned to the incursions of all nations. The barbarians harass the frontier, rebels violate it every day, every one robs it, enemies devastate our seaports, they penetrate into the fields of Egypt; if there is an arm of a river they halt there, they stay for days, for months; they come as numerous as reptiles, and no one is able to sweep them back, these wretches ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... still how he met Cospatrick, Earl of March, one sunny day, and foretold that, ere the next noon passed, a terrible tempest would devastate Scotland. The stout Earl laughed, but his laughter was short, for by next day at noon the tidings came that Alexander III., that much loved King, was lying stiff and stark on the sands of Kinghorn. He ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... deliberate crimes Andy laid upon her dimpled shoulders. With her it was pure, cold-blooded business, this luring of the land-hungry to a land whose fertility was at best problematical; who would, for a price, turn loose the victims of her greed to devastate what ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... belligerents. Her surviving population is flying into all the neighboring countries to escape from the incessant hail of shrapnel and howitzer shells from British cannon, French cannon, German cannon, and, most tragic of all, Belgian cannon; for the Belgian Army is being forced to devastate its own country in its ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... year for the Jack-rabbits. A foolish law had set a bounty on Hawks and Owls and had caused a general massacre of these feathered policemen. Consequently the Rabbits had multiplied in such numbers that they now were threatening to devastate the country. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... him she might have wasted her time breaking hearts and slapping faces in some country village. He it was set her devastating society; and with his aid she shall devastate you.—Vandeleur, will you ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... them, in one maddening moment releast All that's evil and fierce in man's nature, to crush And extinguish in man all that's good. In the rush Of wild jealousy, all the fierce passions that waste And darken and devastate intellect, chased From its realm human reason. The wild animal In the bosom of man was set free. And of all Human passions the fiercest, fierce jealousy, fierce As the fire, and more wild than the whirlwind, to pierce And to rend, rush'd upon him; fierce jealousy, swell'd By all ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... country can always be invaded and that the fleet alone is a safe refuge. This is the same advice as that given by Pericles, and which Thucydides expresses thus, "Let your country be devastated, or even devastate it yourself, and set sail ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... let them spoil. The weather was quite cool after the rain of last night. The country through which we passed had been in the enemy's hands last year, and was evacuated by them after the battles before Richmond; but at that time it was not their custom to burn, destroy, and devastate—everything looked green and beautiful, and did not in the least give one the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... yarn with some pictures of the manners of to-day in the greater world—not the shoddy sham world of cities, clubs, and colleges, but the world where men still live a man's life. The worst of my news is the influenza; Apia is devastate; the shops closed, a ball put off, etc. As yet we have not had it at Vailima, and, who knows? we may escape. None of us go down, but of course ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tendency" this is the case only because the very motives which may induce the Emperor to insist on his demands—in defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct tendency, and because the grave consequences of the War must appear much more momentous than the original ostensible cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to the back door ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Plan, design, project, scheme, plot. Playful, mischievous, roguish, prankish, sportive, arch. Plentiful, plenteous, abundant, bounteous, copious, profuse, exuberant, luxuriant. Plunder, rifle, loot, sack, pillage, devastate, despoil. Pretty, beautiful, comely, handsome, fair. Profitable, remunerative, lucrative, gainful. Prompt, punctual, ready, expeditious. Pull, draw, drag, haul, tug, tow. Push, shove, thrust. Puzzle, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... protection of a marine, commercial people, who were for the most part opposed to it. When Clay, in the lofty style common to the time, declared the Americans unconquerable, and that if the enemy should lay in ashes New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and should devastate the whole Atlantic coast, the people would retreat beyond the Alleghenies to live and flourish there, a member from New Jersey protested that this was too high a price for him; that he had no inclination to go beyond the Alleghenies; and that even ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... continually increasing in number, so that under a "sea-king" called Eric, they made a descent in the Elbe and the Weser, pillaged Hamburg, penetrated far into Germany, and after gaining two battles, retreated with immense booty. The pirates, thus reinforced on all sides, long continued to devastate Germany, France, and England; some penetrated into Andalusia and Hetruria, where they destroyed the flourishing town of Luni; whilst others, descending the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... speeded-up bombardment instead of a millennial sniping from the sky. The Fifth Planet was newly shattered into bits. Its fragments plunged upon Earth and moon as they had weeks earlier battered Mars, and as fortnights later they would devastate Venus and plunge upon Mercury. Jagged portions of the detonated planet filled the sky of ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... pillage, ravage, depredate, despoil devastate, sack; corrupt, vitiate, debase, mar, demoralize, deprave, sophisticate, infect, defile, contaminate; disfigure, deface, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... it is boldly to carry terror against an enemy, and, removing the danger from oneself, to bring another into peril? Can there be a stronger instance than Hannibal himself, or one more to the point? It makes a great difference whether you devastate the territories of another, or see your own destroyed by fire and sword. He who brings danger upon another has more spirit than he who repels it. Add to this, that the terror excited by unknown circumstances ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius



Words linked to "Devastate" :   overtake, waste, destroy, overwhelm, overcome, ruin, desolate, lay waste to, whelm, devastation, scourge, ravage



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