Devastating

How to spell devastating

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce devastating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does devastating mean?

1. adjectiveCausing severe and overwhelming damage, distress, or shock.

Devastating in a sentence

• The flood had a devastating effect on the riverside businesses.

• Losing the contract was a devastating blow to the small firm.

Where does devastating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb devastare, meaning 'to lay waste utterly', which combined the intensifying prefix de- with vastare, 'to lay waste' or 'to ravage'. That vastare grew from the adjective vastus, meaning 'empty', 'desolate', or 'immense', the very same root that gives us the everyday word 'vast'. English took up the verb 'devastate' in the early seventeenth century, and the participle 'devastating' soon followed, first describing literal ruin of land and towns and later broadening to mean anything overwhelmingly damaging or emotionally crushing. The single internal 's' often trips writers, since the unstressed middle syllable swallows the sound; remembering the link to 'vast' helps fix the 'vast' core in place. The spelling keeps just one 't' before the ending, unlike words that double a final consonant.

How the word is built

• de- (intensive, thoroughly)
• vast (lay waste, from Latin vastare)
• -at(e) (verb-forming)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)