Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To bring heavy destruction on; devastate: A tornado ravaged the town.
- v. To pillage; sack: Enemy soldiers ravaged the village.
- v. To wreak destruction.
- n. The act or practice of pillaging, destroying, or devastating.
- n. Grievous damage; havoc: the ravages of disease.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Desolation or destruction wrought by the violent action of men or beasts, or by physical or moral causes; devastation; havoc; waste; ruin: as, the ravage of a lion; the ravages of fire or tempest; the ravages of an invading army; the ravages of passion or grief.
- n. Synonyms Pillage, plunder, spoliation, despoilment. These words all apply not to the treatment of people directly, but to the destruction or appropriation of property.
- To desolate violently; lay waste, as by force, storm, etc.; commit havoc on; devastate; pillage; despoil.
- Synonyms To plunder, waste. See the noun.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To devastate or destroy something
- v. transitive To pillage or sack something, to lay waste to something
- v. intransitive To wreak destruction
- n. Grievous damage or havoc
- n. Depredation or devastation
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Desolation by violence; violent ruin or destruction; devastation; havoc; waste.
- v. To lay waste by force; to desolate by violence; to commit havoc or devastation upon; to spoil; to plunder; to consume.
WordNet 3.0
- v. cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
- v. make a pillaging or destructive raid on (a place), as in wartimes
- n. (usually plural) a destructive action
Etymologies
- From French ravage ("ravage, havoc, spoil"), from ravir ("to bear away suddenly"), from Latin rapere ("to snatch, seize"), akin to Ancient Greek ἁρπάζω (arpazō, "to seize") (Wiktionary)
- French ravager, from Old French, to uproot, from ravir, to ravish; see ravish. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Genocide was the most sobering reality of all," the department said in the 2006 "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," noting that mass killings continued to "ravage" Darfur nearly 60 years after the world vowed "Never again!" following the Holocaust.”
“Interacting with the wolves is purely voluntary, as they do not initiate the encounter that will (to use the developer's own term) 'ravage' the girl and leave her back on the path, where she can continue the last few steps towards the house.”
“I could not ride any distance in the conventional mode, and was just going to give up this splendid "ravage," when the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at”
“On the one hand, the Bank Panic of 2008, started in and by America, will continue to ravage the recessional economy.”
“This carbon loophole has allowed pollution giants like Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Coal, and Massey Energy to ravage the planet, sicken our children, and rake in obscene profits for decades.”
“Seeing how cancer can ravage the vitality from a person, it was a damned humbling sight.”
“As cholera continues to ravage parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America -- reportedly reaching Puerto Rico and Hong Kong this week -- public health researchers are looking to the skies in hopes of anticipating future outbreaks.”
The Huffington Post: Satellite Images May Help Predict The Next Cholera Outbreak
“He knew he would have to face Darius at some point as the Great King could not allow him to ravage his empire unpunished.”
“In rural Statesboro, Georgia during the early 1900s William James started schools for rural Blacks during a time of ravage racial discrimination.”
“Throwing more resources research dollars, drug development funds, clinical trial investments, and thousands of highly trained personnel at the challenges of pathological brain aging without challenging some deeply entrenched assumptions about these diseases, and how it is that they ravage brain function, are doomed to repeat the past.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ravage’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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hunting
crudely, unequivocal, obsolete, obscure, overtly, misdeed, shack, inherent, outcry, hefty, composed, poised and 318 more...
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fight
words for fighting
( open list, randomness )bout, fight, match, smackdown, blue, stoush, battle, clash, fuss, fray, ruckus, tussle and 115 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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The -ages of Man(-age)
Trivet also has this list, which you should go see. And then I found this list, and this list...
manage, salvage, selvadge, savage, voyage, umbrage, entourage, homage, carriage, marriage, language, potage and 123 more...
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I am : violent
Destructive verbs that speed up entropy. (Still working on definition of what I want; may add adjectives later.)
destroy, wreck, thrash, trash, beat up, annihilate, exterminate, disembowel, eviscerate, disintegrate, explode, bomb and 41 more...
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Gristle and Flesh
Words that taste of violence, trauma, blood and brain, gore-some and slippery with vitreous humours. Lovely words, some of them! And the loveliest thing is how many of them are so *effective*, ma...
abattoir, gristle, viscous, eviscerate, ravage, carnage, gouge, claret, slaughterous, sanguinary, laniate, defenestrate and 11 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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diioxyde's Words
macabre, egypt, egyptology, queen, love, sex, sister, lover, web, cobweb, line, circle and 223 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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booknerd's Words
frenetic, elite, kiss, grip, flesh, sugar, ciao, occult, copious, antiquated, drawl, lush and 101 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ravage.
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