Desolation is bleak emptiness, or utter misery. The desolation of the moor, a scene of desolation, sink into desolation.
It works for a landscape and for a person with the same word, which few words do: an empty place and an empty heart are both desolate. The Latin behind it means made alone, which is exactly the shared idea.
1noundesolationBleak emptiness, or utter misery.
“After the flood, the valley was a scene of mud and desolation.”
desolation is an emptiness.
Latin desolatio comes from desolare, to leave alone — de plus solus, alone.
Latin
dēsōlātiō
Old French
desolacion
Middle English
desolacioun
English, today
desolation
Middle English desolacioun, from Middle French -, Old French desolacion, from Latin dēsōlātiō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA