desolate

adj

1. Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.

   “a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house”

   “I will make Jerusalem […] a den of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.”

   “And the silvery marish flowers that throng / The desolate creeks and pools among.”

   “There are few sights that leave a railway lover more wistful than a desolate railway viaduct no longer carrying tracks. As with tunnels, so much effort was made to conquer the landscape, yet so many now stand forlorn.”

2. Barren and lifeless.
3. Made unfit for habitation or use because of neglect, destruction etc.

   “desolate altars”

4. Dismal or dreary.
5. Sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   “He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.”

   “voice of the poor and desolate”

   “Any help and suggestions from our gay brothers and sisters would be appreciated from this isolated camp. We need some contacts: lawyers, organizations, or people who are concerned enough to help. We are two desolate, suppressed lesbians! We are seeking help from anyone who will help us fight for our rights.”

verb

1. To deprive of inhabitants.

   “If you consider well of the People of the West-Indies, it is very probable, that they are a newer or younger People, than the People of the old World. And it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by Earthquakes, […] but rather, it was Desolated by a particular Deluge: For Earthquakes are seldom in those Parts.”

   “O Righteous Themis, if the Pow’rs above By Pray’rs are bent to pity, and to love; If humane Miseries can move their Mind; If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind; Tell how we may restore, by second birth, Mankind, and people desolated Earth.”

   “York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to estimate its ordinary population […]”

2. To devastate or lay waste somewhere.

   “Then Moath pointed where a cloud Of Locusts, from the desolated fields Of Syria, wing’d their way.”

   “But in Utopia there will be wide stretches of cheerless or unhealthy or toilsome or dangerous land with never a household; there will be regions of mining and smelting, black with the smoke of furnaces and gashed and desolated by mines, with a sort of weird inhospitable grandeur of industrial desolation, and the men will come thither and work for a spell and return to civilisation again, washing and changing their attire in the swift gliding train.”

3. To abandon or forsake something.

   “It is not to be supposed that when Cush left Armenia, he left it desolate, and that a rich and long settled country was abandoned altogether; for it would be an absurd way of founding an universal empire, to desolate one country in order to people another.”

   “This completion of the Temple and attack upon Christians is the event that marks the apostasy that causes desolation, the detestable act that causes God to desolate (abandon) and destroy the Temple for the last time.”

   “Combining widowed, separated, and divorced elders into a single group ("desolated"), the data indicated that desolated elders were slightly more lonely than either married or never-married older people (although this trend was not statistically significant at the conventional .05 level).”

4. To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   “It is not altogether uncommon to hear a reader whose heart has been desolated by the poignancy of a narrative complain that the writer is unemotional.”

   “Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.”