lay waste
IdiomsExample 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
All that can contaminate water and soil, not to mention lay waste to large tracts of land.
From Science Magazine • Nov. 1, 2022
So they're happy to do their part to lay waste to the idea that truth has any value at all.
From Salon • Apr. 27, 2022
Now, Francis thinks, “there was clearly no need for a war to lay waste to the biosphere; all that was needed was business as usual.”
From New York Times • May 31, 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.
