What's the difference between derelict and desolate?

Derelict


Definition:

  • (a.) Given up or forsaken by the natural owner or guardian; left and abandoned; as, derelict lands.
  • (a.) Lost; adrift; hence, wanting; careless; neglectful; unfaithful.
  • (n.) A thing voluntary abandoned or willfully cast away by its proper owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.
  • (n.) A tract of land left dry by the sea, and fit for cultivation or use.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It put on the agenda the need to upgrade the existing urban fabric, and to use the derelict and brownfield sites in our cities before encroaching on the countryside.
  • (2) There are allegations of very, very serious dereliction of duty and of wrongdoing by people in the police at the time who were investigating – it is alleged – some of the most grotesque crimes imaginable.” According to Newsnight, the officers involved said they did not know the senior figure who threatened them.
  • (3) Some of these are functions that would once have been taken on through squatting – and sometimes still are, as at Open House , a social centre recently and precariously opened in London's Elephant & Castle, an area torn apart by rampant gentrification, where estates are flogged off to developers with zero commitment to public housing and the aforementioned "shopping village" is located in a derelict estate.
  • (4) "It will be a dereliction of duty by those considering the bids if they choose to write off half a billion pounds of public investment and go with a football-only solution rather than the multiuse facility that was promised."
  • (5) In between, the small downtown area is a shell of empty, crumbling shop fronts and derelict, boarded-up houses interspersed with the odd bar, ramshackle residential street and tracts of wasteland.
  • (6) She added that the superstore would have pulled business from the local high street and brought big lorries and heavy traffic to the site which sits next to Dreamland, Margate’s derelict amusement park which is being revived.
  • (7) A scramble is on to find suitable empty properties, from rooms in private homes, to sports halls and disused school buildings to derelict soldiers’ barracks, even inflatable circus tents.
  • (8) If we don't take these long-term decisions now we will be committing a serious dereliction of our duty to the future of this country."
  • (9) This 49-storey building has sat derelict in the city’s downtown for 17 years, after an economic crisis halted its costly development.
  • (10) It’s about why this government chose to not upgrade Don Dale and to throw children in a derelict male prison.” Lawrence said the problems of juveniles in NT prisons had to be addressed “by a system that’s properly resourced, providing nothing less than best practice which is acquitted by fully qualified and professionally trained staff, creating appropriate behavioural programs and education for adolescent offenders of various types and backgrounds”.
  • (11) In November, AUC confirmed that they planned to demolish at least 40% of the wall in order to tear down the derelict building behind it.
  • (12) During a recession in the 70s, London boroughs started buying up derelict, and even non-derelict, housing for the purposes of doing them up and letting them to council tenants; this, typically, is the outsourced version.
  • (13) The warehouses have no running water or sanitation, and the refugees and migrants live in derelict conditions, burning everything they can get their hands on to keep warm.
  • (14) In Poland , where temperatures have dropped to -22C, officials have been trying to direct homeless people away from derelict unheated buildings and into crammed shelters.
  • (15) In explaining the alcoholic process to the public, this fiction contributed to the general belief that the typical alcoholic was a Skid Row-like derelict.
  • (16) Mr Blair warned that failing to replace the current ageing plants would fuel global warming, endanger Britain's energy security and represent a dereliction of duty to the country.
  • (17) Thanks to the beneficence of its owner he and his allies have recently moved into a derelict 19th-century sea fort on the tiny island of Stack Rock, taking with them camping supplies and generators.
  • (18) The Senate and the House have been passive up until now and derelict in their responsibilities.
  • (19) Robert Morris, 34, is one of eight people of varying ages and backgrounds about to move into a derelict former children's care home in east London.
  • (20) He and the other new arrivals were put up in a derelict shack, with plywood walls, a tin roof and no fan to ease the humid air.

Desolate


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute or deprived of inhabitants; deserted; uninhabited; hence, gloomy; as, a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house.
  • (a.) Laid waste; in a ruinous condition; neglected; destroyed; as, desolate altars.
  • (a.) Left alone; forsaken; lonely; comfortless.
  • (a.) Lost to shame; dissolute.
  • (a.) Destitute of; lacking in.
  • (v. t.) To make desolate; to leave alone; to deprive of inhabitants; as, the earth was nearly desolated by the flood.
  • (v. t.) To lay waste; to ruin; to ravage; as, a fire desolates a city.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Downtown LA is improving, but for years it was a desolate hell zone of freeways, office blocks and closed stores.
  • (2) The coast here feels like an island, desolate and full of surprises.
  • (3) The Eritrean government requires every pupil to complete their final year of high school by serving in Sawa Military Camp, in the desolate, semi-desert region of eastern Eritrea .
  • (4) But for the next few hours, though, there's little to excite us: Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) The economic data calendar is a desolate wasteland of nothingness.
  • (5) When it is not clogged with weekend traffic, Container – the English word is used in Arabic – is a desolate spot: a lonely stretch of asphalt, four dingy tollbooth-like structures painted white and green, a few bored Israeli soldiers with automatic rifles.
  • (6) They are kept in a small pen behind the Lion's Den, a pub on a ranch in desolate countryside 75 miles south of Johannesburg.
  • (7) It was after the Indian wars of the 1870s that the indigenous tribes started to be consigned to reservations – on the worst, most desolate lands for grazing or growing crops.
  • (8) And, Jinkyo-En which was a desolate waste has come to an oasis in life for the Hansenites.
  • (9) The first time I saw the building - a stark, unapologetically angular silver bunker throwing back the heat of a rather desolate part of Berlin - I was content to register its disturbance without question, submitting to its strategies of oppression and disorientation as a child would.
  • (10) "Given the complexity of this crisis and the extent of the distress of our people from the north … we must together, I say together, clear the path ahead to free our country from these invaders, who only leave desolation, deprivation and pain in their wake."
  • (11) And it's Christmas bonanza time along the high streets of Britain, where Oxfam outlets and estate agents lie lonely amid empty sites and desolate closed doors.
  • (12) Australian visual effects wizard Dave Clayton has been nominated for his work on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
  • (13) But, like many streets in New York City and in cities across the US, it is becoming increasingly desolate.
  • (14) Season two crafted complex characters racked with existential ambivalence – heroines marked for the abyss, fragile, flammable outcasts and desolate prodigies, all of whose private pain was as palpable as the crimson bloodbath head witch Evelyn Poole soaks in.
  • (15) Instead, they suggest expanding the scope of services in family planning clinics, out of an awareness that the continuing high prevalence of unintended childbearing, among the young and disadvantaged in particular, is part of a larger problem of living in a desolate social environment.
  • (16) "I watched this guy brushing off dirt from a skull in the most desolate landscape and right then I just knew," Rincón said of his first encounter with palaeontology.
  • (17) There was nothing to see for miles but sage-covered high desert, a landscape of stark beauty and eerie desolation.
  • (18) The contemporary state of the sub-discipline of endocrinology within the framework of internal medicine is generally considered rather desolate, but so far actual data were lacking.
  • (19) Howell said in July: "There are large uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly up in the north-east where there's plenty of room for fracking well away from anyone's residence where it can be conducted without any kind of threat to the rural environment."
  • (20) A subroutine called DESOL for the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations of the type arising in biological simulation problems is described.