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.
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
In the ultra-competitive social-media field, cutbacks can give competitors a lane to lay waste to your business.
From Slate • Jul. 22, 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
That fascination has infested me today like the wood-eating bugs that slowly lay waste to our house.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
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.
