The difference between Destroy and Devastate
When used as verbs, destroy means to damage beyond use or repair, whereas devastate means to ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.
check bellow for the other definitions of Destroy and Devastate
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Destroy as a verb (transitive):
To damage beyond use or repair.
Examples:
"The earthquake destroyed several apartment complexes."
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Destroy as a verb (intransitive):
To cause destruction.
Examples:
"Hooligans destroy unprovoked."
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Destroy as a verb (transitive):
To neutralize, undo a property or condition.
Examples:
"Smoking destroys the natural subtlety of the palate."
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Destroy as a verb (transitive):
To put down or euthanize.
Examples:
"'Destroying a rabid dog is required by law."
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Destroy as a verb (transitive):
To severely disrupt the well-being of (a person); ruin.
Examples:
"Her divorce destroyed her; she had a nervous breakdown and was severely depressed for more than a year."
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Destroy as a verb (colloquial, transitive):
To defeat soundly.
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Destroy as a verb (computing, transitive):
To remove data.
Examples:
"The memory leak happened because we forgot to destroy the temporary lists."
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Destroy as a verb (US, colloquial, slang):
To sing a song poorly.
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Devastate as a verb:
To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest.
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Devastate as a verb:
To destroy a whole collection of related ideas, beliefs, and strongly held opinions.
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Devastate as a verb:
To break beyond recovery or repair so that the only options are abandonment or the clearing away of useless remains (if any) and starting over.