Improve your vocabulary by Quiz

Use ravage in a sentence

Definition of ravage:

  • (noun) a destructive action; "the ravages of time";
  • (verb) make a pillaging or destructive raid on (a place), as in wartimes
  • (verb) devastate or ravage;

Sentence Examples:

The Sultan guards this gateway to the most vulnerable part of his dominion, not only to prevent the entrance of a hostile fleet, but to protect his people from the incursions of that insidious foe, the plague, which sometimes ravages the Eastern countries.

One of these sledges remained stationary at some distance within the line, where the ravages of death were marked by pools of blood upon the snow, and at this point were grouped several individuals, assembled round a body which was about to be conveyed away.

Though very destructive to houses, fences, and other articles of value, their ravages are far more than repaid by the benefits bestowed; for they act as scavengers in removing the great quantity of decaying vegetable matter, which would otherwise make the atmosphere intolerable.

When we reflect upon the terrible ravages made by infectious diseases, and all their attendant evils for these many years, we can the better appreciate the work done of late years by tireless scientists in their efforts to modify the activity of disease-producing bacteria.

By the end of the month of May, we had some twenty temporary wells in operation, and these, in addition to what water the pools afforded, relieved the situation to some extent, though the ravages of death by thirst went on apace among the weaker cattle.

In 1577 Sir Francis Drake entered upon his memorable voyage around the world, defiantly navigating that South Sea which Spain has regarded as exclusively her own, and ravaging the Peruvian treasure ships even more ruthlessly than the French had preyed upon those of Mexico.

From thence, travelling eastward along the course of the river, the epidemic continued its ravages among the inhabitants of the towns and villages situated on the right bank, attacking first one place and then another, until the whole province scarcely escaped depopulation.

Our condition is further to be ascribed to our insular position, which has led us to seek the empire of the seas, and often preserved us from being ravaged by invaders; while it has given a stimulus to our commerce, with its peaceful and humanizing tendencies.

No one must know that this ship, secretly restored from the ravages of her former crew, entertained the slightest idea of sailing; not one of the swarm of spies in German pay, infesting New York and its environs, must suspect this midnight-to-dawn embarkation!

"Yes," and she glanced down at her niece, whose pretty eyes were making short work of the sunburned, broad-shouldered, smooth-faced, handsome boy, who was entirely willing to close the festivities of Commencement week subjected to the ravages of a grand, even if a hopeless, passion.

Such are the effects of war, that it saps the vitals even of the neutral countries, who, obtaining a sudden influx of wealth, appear to be rendered flourishing by the destruction which ravages the hapless nations who are sacrificed to the ambition of their governors.

He describes it as a machine which, were it possible to make its parts hold together unimpaired by rotation or the ravages of time, and to give it a path encircling the earth, would assuredly continue to roll along in one undeviating course until time shall be no more.

We also may discover their destitute and miserable situation, in consequence of the ravages of war, and the wide field of labor that opens for the benevolent and philanthropic mind to extend the empire of civilization and knowledge, to these untutored sons of the forest.

Two years of hardships and danger had left no mark upon him, the deadly climate of the region through which he had passed had not impaired his powerful physique, and disease that had ravaged the scientific mission had left him, like Craven, unscathed.

The following morning fulfilled the promise of the tranquil evening and starry night, which, amid the deep quiet of the country, had done much to refresh a man, in whom, indeed, a stimulating consciousness of success seemed already to have repaired the ravages of the fight.

They say that in former time the children of high rank were not allowed to enter the houses of common people or play with their children, and in consequence of this exclusiveness they seldom contracted yaws until they were of an age to resist its ravages.

Happily perhaps for Titian, though unfortunately for the world at large, Giorgione was destined to fall a victim to one of the plagues that ravaged Venice from time to time, and he died soon after completing his thirtieth year, leaving Titian undisputed master of Venetian painting.

Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state of nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness of political society.

To what else have been owing the extensive ravages of national persecutions, and religious wars and crusades; whereby rapacity, and pride, and cruelty, sheltering themselves (sometimes even from the furious bigots themselves) under the mask of this specious principle, have so often afflicted the world?

Bigger wars devastated other regions, Germany in particular in all its many subdivisions, where it seems impossible to believe there could ever be a loaf of bread or a cup of wine of native growth, so perpetually was every dukedom ravaged, and every principality brought to ruin.

They pillaged, ravaged, burned, massacred all that came in their way, sparing not even the fruit trees, which might have afforded some poor food to the remnant of the population, who had escaped from them into caves, the recesses of the mountains, or into vaults.

When men complained that pirates were ravaging the coasts and were probably supported by Eric, the king who had been deposed, Christopher answered that, having been deprived of three kingdoms, a man could hardly be blamed for stealing a dinner now and then.

Boatmen on the river, and laborers in the cities do not show the ravages of the drug as a class, for as soon as they become actual fiends they disappear from the busy arteries of commerce, just as drunkards do from active business circles in other lands.

Having described the chief peculiarities of these worms, shown their mode of working, and the extent to which their destructive powers may be carried, it will now be necessary to consider the various schemes which have been proposed and tried to prevent their desolating ravages.

Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this formidable robber.

The dogs which these poor people have nursed and bred up in order to assist them in hunting the kangaroo, have latterly become so numerous and wild as to be a very serious and alarming nuisance to the settlers, committing on many farms nightly ravages on their flocks.

Whilst seeking extraneous aids to beauty, they neglected the simplest precautions for its preservation, though, when their charms had faded, they eagerly sought means to repair what were incorrectly called the ravages of time, but were only the unavoidable consequences of their own neglect.

The crews of forty, or seventy, or one hundred were relegated to vermin-infested hammocks above decks, with short rations of rye bread and salt fish, and such scant supply of fresh water that scurvy invariably ravaged the ship whenever foul weather lengthened the passage.

Nineteen out of twenty accept the situation without protest and sink slowly to a mere vegetative state of existence, but, in the twentieth, some little knot of cells rebel, revert to an ancestral power of breeding rapidly to escape extinction, begin to make ravages, and cancer is born.

The herds being constantly exposed to the ravages of the lion, the natives are obliged to take measures to protect them, but, the gun in their unskilled hands proving often as fatal to themselves as to their enemy, they are forced to resort to other means.

The epoch-making studies by Major Ross and other scientists of the influence of the mosquito on the distribution of malaria have shewn that we are within measurable distance of largely minimizing its ravages, if not of completely removing it from the necessary risks of African life.

The heats became excessive; the want of water, bad food, disease, which continued its ravages, and the grief at being shut up in a camp without the power to fight, completed the despondency that had taken possession of the minds of leaders and soldiers.

The common herd of warlike adventurers, the mere men of the sword, who had thronged to Spain for the purpose of ravage and rapine, were disappointed at being thus checked in their career, and at seeing the reign of terror and violence drawing to a close.

The ravages of the war carried off the poets, scholars, and philosophers of the generation which immediately followed these men, and by destroying their natural successors left them standing magnified beyond their natural size, like a grove of trees left by a fire.

It is not, like smallpox or typhoid, a disease which produces a brief and sudden storm, a violent struggle with the forces of life, in which it tends, even without treatment, provided the organism is healthy, to succumb, leaving little or no traces of its ravages behind.

The wars with the Turks and the subsequent war with the other Balkan states, the ravages of cholera and, one may unhappily conclude too, the ravages of hunger after the dreadful ordeals of the successive campaigns, have taken heavy toll of Bulgarian manhood.

After execution, the body of the felon was taken from the gallows and hung upon a gibbet conveniently near the place where the fact was committed, there to remain, until, from the action of the elements, or the ravages of birds of prey, it disappeared.

Death in some unknown and horrible form was imminent for himself and his companions, he knew, but his thoughts were going far beyond that, to the time when the Shining Ones would emerge in all their resistless power to ravage and conquer a helpless world.

Old boundaries were swept aside, old traditions were disregarded, old rulers were dethroned; everywhere were the French, with their Republican banners, mouthing the great words Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, ravaging and plundering in the most shameless fashion, and extorting the most exorbitant taxes.

None, indeed, save those who had so valiantly endured the terrible changes in the barometer of expectation could entirely gauge the sensitivity of those ill-fed, debilitated thousands, ravaged by disease, privation, and warfare, who hung oscillating day after day between salvation and destruction.

Like a swarm of gigantic locusts, the camels of the idolatrous army ravaged the verdant meadows, whilst horsemen slaughtered cattle and, madly rushing, the riders trampled down and scattered the golden harvest, with all the disdain of traders for the work of husbandmen.

Having more than once failed in getting a shot at a formidable lion which had committed great ravages, and was reported to be of immense size, he determined upon tracking the beast to his rocky fastness, and forcing him to a hand-to-hand combat in his very den.

In his old age he resolves to attack a dragon which is ravaging the land, and in spite of the cowardice of his followers, of whom all except one forsake him, he eventually succeeds in destroying it, though not before he has himself received a mortal wound.

The city too, from the number of people within its walls, began to exhibit symptoms of a pestilential nature, and the alarm became most distressing; inhabitants and troops alike became martyrs to its ravages, and every thing indicated the most wretched termination of the siege.

Her fever, by a favorable crisis, and the great skill of her physicians, left her in a fortnight; but this violent distemper had made such a ravage in her delicate constitution, and reduced her so low, that there seemed very little probability of her recovery.

Certainly it is common to see whole villages in a state of jaundice, and in some years the ravages of the disease are truly formidable; but, though it may be classed as epidemic, we may, at the same time, annex an endemic distinction in regard to each village separately.

A capricious government in England was granting and annulling charters with alarming frequency, and the colonies were in a corresponding state of uncertainty and apprehension, while the ravages of the Indian wars did much to occupy and distract the thoughts of the New Haven people.

This still survives, though in an advanced state of decay, simply because other States are not prepared to encounter the risks of a disturbance which might end in a general bonfire, extending its ravages to districts very far remote from the scene of the original trouble.

As a result of the cotton price demoralization resulting from the war, the labor depression, the ravages of the cotton boll weevil, and in some regions unusual floods, as already stated, there was in this section of the South an exceptionally large amount of surplus labor.

The Gael, great traditional historians, never forgot that the Lowlands had, at some remote period, been the property of their Celtic forefathers, which furnished an ample vindication of all the ravages that they could make on the unfortunate districts which lay within their reach.

As these began to dwindle away by the shock of battle and the ravages of disease, new members came in, until we find nearly fourteen hundred men on the rolls, exclusive of three months' men: the latter would swell the number to about eighteen hundred men.

The continued and unsparing exposure of their bodies under such heavy rains as had fallen, and their being obliged to lie out, without any covering, for so many nights, during so inclement a season, now began to be felt, and made visible ravages amongst our ranks.

If we recur to the times of invasion when hordes of barbarians sought the subjugation of this island, the predatory warfare with the ravages to which the inland parts of the country were exposed, there would naturally be a disposition and desire of secrecy and seclusion.

And when their Plan was laid, Sloth began her Ravages, and having given Assault with her Satellites, she entered the Domain of the Religious, and by sheer Force carried off their Arms and extinguished their Charity, reducing them to Tepidity and Sluggishness.

With a government both feeble and despotic, it was torn by intestine wars, crushed within by oppression and ravaged without by piracy, until commerce and agriculture, the twin pillars of the state, were equally threatened, and not one element of ruin seemed to be wanting.

Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle of the harbor, it presented the appearance of a vast natural amphitheater in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep glens that furrowed its sides appearing like enormous fissures caused by the ravages of time.

The Scots, with the aid of their French allies, under the command of Sir John de Vienne, had made frequent successful incursions upon the English Borders, ravaging with fire and sword considerable districts of the country, both to the east and west of the frontier.

In this it was urged that, to abandon the line of works, after the great labor and expense of their construction, would be dispiriting to the troops and encouraging to the enemy, while it would expose a wide extent of the surrounding country to maraud and ravage.

The deer fled, too, with a more frightened bound towards their coverts, as if lately alarmed by the pursuit of the huntsman; but the images of devastation, which are associated with the horrid front of war in the mind of all familiar with its ravage, were absent.

The Pennsylvania tribes, such as the Delawares and Shawnees, once friendly to the English settlers, but rendered contemptuous of them by Braddock's defeat, had not ceased ravages against them, even after Wolfe's victory at Quebec in 1759 had made the English masters of the continent.

Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle of the harbor, it presented the appearance of a vast natural amphitheater in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep glens that furrowed its sides appearing like enormous fissures caused by the ravages of time.

To a spiritual director who had traced, period by period, the ravage wrought in this soul by the corrupt leaven inoculated by Theresa's betrayal, such curiosity would doubtless have appeared the most decisive symptom of a metamorphosis in this youth who had grown up amid all modesty.

A moment later the pretty face of the sleepy girl, surrounded by the neat border of a night-cap, appeared, and he hastily informed her that the Indians, in ravaging the frontier, had carried away their relatives, and he was going to set out to recover them.

Indeed, he has released your prisoners, waiving ransom, and though he might have ravaged your country and assaulted your city, he requests to be enrolled among your friends and allies, hoping to gain much assistance from you and to render you still more and greater benefits in return.

Some knowledge of the skill with which fishermen prepare their floats had also evidently been hers, for the whole outside of the garment was smeared or painted with a brownish substance that had preserved it to a wonderful extent from the ravages of moisture and salt.

Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a protection against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the vicinity, and especially the shifting of bodies of this material, are destructive to human industry, and hence, in civilized countries, measures are taken to prevent its spread.

In spite of the temporary shock given to industry by the Reformation, the district had, by the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, quite recovered from the Welsh ravages, and its prosperity at this time was very remarkable.

The recrudescence of "beauty doctors" is noted by "Blanche" in the same year, and the increasing use of paint, not to repair the ravages of age, but to lend additional luster to the bloom of youth, is faithfully recorded by Punch's artists in the decade before the war.

Harassed by internal wars, pinched by necessities that compel them to constant exertion, discouraged by the ravages of diseases, and overwhelmed by innumerable superstitious fears, their condition is not one calculated to prepare either mind or body for the arts and habits of civilization.

In the April of this year, the plague had commenced its appalling ravages in the metropolis, the stagnant air of which was partially purified by means of large bonfires, to promote circulation, the air having, it was supposed, become noxious through unusually prevalent calm sultry weather.

He frequently, however, indulges his native ferocity in petty ravages on the smaller and more timid quadrupeds, such as hares and rabbits: birds also form a favorite object of his attacks, and in pursuit of them he mounts the tallest trees with surprising swiftness and agility.

After some time, his new patron was informed that his vanquished enemy had formed a grand alliance, in order to make war upon him; wherefore, he resolved to begin, and march into the countries of the allies, and ravage the nearest before they could join forces.

Much of the old magnificence has vanished; time has wrought its work, but more deadly than time have been the ravages of covetous men who longed to possess its treasure, or violent men who believed it to be little better than an idol set up in their midst.

The torch has played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed to us their famished wives and children.

He had changed all his clothes, and was carefully dressed in a brown tweed shooting suit and gaiters, but the correctness and order of his external appearance seemed only to emphasize the ravages which one single night's suffering had wrought upon his strong, handsome face.

Here also we are obliged to reject the quaint legend of the priests; the municipal improvements after the great fire which ravaged the city in 1524, necessitated the rectification of the street line, and the north side of the choir had to be slanted to conform thereto.

Looking around they could note the ravages of the flood, for with it there had come a mighty tidal wave from the sea, with abnormally high water that had changed the low marshlands into lakes, and had swollen the small creeks to roaring, rushing rivers.

Although the chronicles make no special mention of the ravages of the epidemic in them, it would, indeed, from other sources of information, appear that during the first half of 1349 the mortality in this district was as great as in most other parts of the country.

Now Frederic and his wife welcomed the Duchess and her children with their wonted hospitality, and insisted on keeping them until the end of the year; but Christina's heart was with her poor subjects, who suffered severely from the ravages of the war.

And despite the efforts of both soldiers and priests, the savages continued to ravage the settlements, to repel pioneering, to decimate the herds and murder the vaqueros who sought to protect them, to plunder everything portable and ambuscade punitive parties, and even to engage in open hostilities.

In their faces were observed indications of the ravages of hunger; but they are always smiling, saying they would prefer suffering in these mountains to being under the dominion of the Americans, and that such sacrifices are the duties of every patriot who loves his country.

The Colorado potato beetle is steadily moving eastward, now ravaging the fields in Indiana and Ohio, and only the forethought and ingenuity in devising means of checking its attacks, resulting from a thorough study of its habits, will deliver our wasted fields from its direful assaults.

Marcel's purpose in encouraging the insurrections of the Jacques and organizing their bands is above all to hurl them in mass against the English in the name of the country that the invaders are ravaging with their predatory bands, and to drive them from our soil.

Advancing up this huddling and riotous brook, we found ourselves in a most extraordinary scene: we were surrounded by hills of the boldest and most precipitous character, and on the margin of a lake which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude neighbors.

The King has long been deeply impressed with the ravages of consumption and other forms of tuberculosis, and when, comparatively recently, an association for the prevention of this terrible scourge was established, he not only became its president, but took an active part in its deliberations.

Most of the soldiers, and no small number of brave Canadians, perished in enterprises ill devised and ruinous to the country, which I found on my arrival ravaged with unheard-of cruelty by the Iroquois, without resistance, and in sight of the troops and of the forts.

To strengthen, support, or propagate the impertinent conjectures of some enthusiasts, or to give validity to the cheats of impostors, in the name of a being, who exists only in their imagination, and who has made himself known only by the ravages, disputes, and follies, he has caused.

Davids in Wales; while the English were oppressed by the cruel wars and ravages of the Danes, and the whole land was in confusion, undertook a long journey to Athens, and there spent many years in the study of the Grecian, Chaldean, and Arabian literature.

Her marvelous preservation throughout all the dangers to which she was exposed seemed almost to warrant the supposition that she had entered into a compact with the pestilence, to extend its ravages by every means in her power, on the condition of being spared herself.

Whether the memory of the hero has passed away, or the ravages of the weather call too heavily on the public purse, I cannot say; but it would be more creditable to the town to remove it entirely, than to allow it to remain in its present disgraceful state.

In those provinces which were fully exposed to the ravages of horse, scarce a vestige remained either of population or agriculture: such of the miserable inhabitants as escaped the fury of the sword were either carried into the Mysore country or left to struggle under the horrors of famine.

Every thing else remaining the same, let us substitute an ocean of mercury for the actual ocean, and the stability will disappear, and the fluid will frequently surpass its boundaries, to ravage continents even to the height of the snowy regions which lose themselves in the clouds.

Too often it does not confine its ravages to the external parts, but it attacks the vital parts; when it affects the lungs it is called consumption, and I wish this to be particularly understood, that consumption is neither more nor less than scrofula of the lungs.

Then he pondered how common he was (not that he, the supercilious one, believed it with fears of being a commoner ravaging his psyche and compelling him to contrive the august demeanor and beliefs that he had as all beliefs were contrivances and fortifications against one's fears).

Tradition credits him with an especial genius for the delineation of animals and landscape, and commemorates his skill by a curious anecdote of a painted horse which left its frame to ravage the fields, and was reduced to pictorial stability only by the sacrifice of its eyes.

This ruin well deserves its name, for with its round towers and high walls rising out of the heaps of stones deep in the mysterious twilight of the cavern, and defying in their sheltered site the ravages of time, it resembles at a distance an enchanted castle.

One could imagine that nature had determined to put beyond the ravages of time some of these old trees, when sinking under the weight of ages, by clothing them in a mantle of gray moss, which hangs in long festoons from the topmost branches to the ground.

The country upon the borders of the forest presented a barren and miserable appearance, mainly in consequence of the extreme poverty of its inhabitants, who were deterred from the agricultural pursuits which they would otherwise have followed by the constant ravages of the cruel Boar.

This ruin well deserves its name, for with its round towers and high walls rising out of the heaps of stones deep in the mysterious twilight of the cavern, and defying in their sheltered site the ravages of time, it resembles at a distance an enchanted castle.

Albeit our women know neither how to grow fat or thin, or how to dye their hair, or how to make use of a thousand other tricks, which beauty uses to repair the irreparable ravages of time; they know how to paint themselves, and how to adorn their persons.