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.
The trebuchet was the most fearsome weapon of medieval times, a giant catapult that could lay waste to any fortress by battering its walls with boulders.
From Slate • Jul. 7, 2025
Tactical nuclear weapons, as the term implies, are far smaller and less powerful than strategic nuclear armaments such as intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear payloads that could lay waste to large population centers.
From Los Angeles Times • May 6, 2024
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
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.
