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1. Providing no shelter or sustenance
   "the desolate surface of the moon";
   - bare, barren, bleak, stark
    
2. Crushed by grief
   "depressed and desolate of soul"; "a low desolate wail"

1. Leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch
   - abandon, forsake [literary], desert
    
2. Reduce in population
   "The epidemic desolated the countryside";
   - depopulate
    
3. Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
   - lay waste to, waste, devastate, ravage, scourge, lay waste

Derived forms: desolating, desolates, desolated

See also: disconsolate, inconsolable, inhospitable, unconsolable

Type of: destroy, leave, reduce, ruin, shrink

Encyclopedia: Desolate