overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

devastate.

To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/Canada, UK, US/ˈdev.ə.stæɪt/Australia
  1. To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.

  2. To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.

  3. To break beyond recovery or repair so that the only options are abandonment or the clearing away of useless remains (if any) and starting over.

  4. To greatly demoralize, to cause to suffer intense grief or dismay

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Latin dēvastātus, perfect passive participle of dēvastō (“to lay waste, devastate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)); from dē- (augmentative prefix) + vastō (“to destroy, lay waste”). See vast. First attested in 1638.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

devastate has 9 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

devastate studiodevastate workshello, devastate

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.