Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Showing results for lay waste. Search instead for Lay wastes.
Synonyms

lay waste

Idioms  

  1. Ravage, ruin, as in The hurricane laid waste the entire seashore. Originally referring to the devastation caused by attackers, this term has come to be used more generally.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Nick Cage wrote: “Hopefulness is not a neutral position.... It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 20, 2025

The genre, in which gigantic beasts à la Godzilla lay waste to cities and swaths of countryside, is not known for restraint, but “Shin Ultraman” is completely, unpredictably off the wall.

From New York Times • Sep. 1, 2023

All that can contaminate water and soil, not to mention lay waste to large tracts of land.

From Science Magazine • Nov. 1, 2022

That way lies the madness of the Alpha Couple, willing to lay waste to everything in the name of true love.

From Slate • Mar. 3, 2021

There was no kindness, no gentleness to this departure; nothing human, but rather a degeneration into some demonic substratum of the body that had waited to lay waste to all the lineaments of grace.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.