Noun
The act of devastating, or the state of being devastated; a laying waste.
Waste of the goods of the deceased by an executor or administrator.
Source: Webster's dictionaryIt is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness calling their denial knowled. George Eliot
All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced by slow and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction and devastation only is violent and rapid. Albert Pike
American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc. Katherine Dunn
Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page. Thomas Ligotti
When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation. Wilfred Burchett
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation. Alice Walker