desirous, adj. 1. desiring, eager, fain, longing, yearning, desiderative; wishing, wishful, pining, hoping, hopeful; partial to, inclined, prone to, ready, willing, impatient, SI. itchy, anxious, overanxious.
2. enthusiastic, enthused, Inf. wild, agog, Inf. psyched or psyched up; stimulated, excited, aroused, Inf. hot; lusting after, SI. hot for, mad about, Inf. dying for, Inf. wild about, infatuated; inflamed, fired up, burning, impassioned, passionate; fervent, fervid, perfervid, ardent, zealous, spirited.
3. ambitious, emulous, aspiring; enterprising, up-and-coming, pushing, Inf. pushy, aggressive.
4. avid, greedy, craving; appetitive, hungry, thirsty, ravenous, voracious, omnivorous; covetous, avaricious, rapacious. desist, v. 1. stop, SI. cheese, hold, stay, cease, arrest, halt; pull up, stop short, come to a halt; discontinue, interrupt, suspend, intermit; drop, have done with, let alone, let be, leave well enough alone, keep one's hands off, turn aside; resist, abstain, forbear, restrain, hold back voluntarily; forgo, do without, sacrifice; give up, Inf. swear off, quit, leave off, break off, let up, pause; renounce, relinquish, put aside.
2. keep in check, hold back, curb, curtail; control, SI. lay off, Inf. let up on, contain; withhold, deny, abnegate, suppress, repress; refuse, decline, take no part in, have nothing to do with, stand or hold aloof; rebuff, reject, spurn; avoid, eschew, shun, desolate, adj. 1. devastated, laid waste, desolated, barren; ravaged, gutted, wrecked, ruined, destroyed.
2. deserted, uninhabited, unpeopled, depopulated, untenanted, unoccupied; desert, waste, wild, bare, empty, destitute; unvisited, unfrequented, inhospitable; solitary, lonely, isolated, remote, secluded, out-of-the-way.
3. forlorn, Poetic, lorn, bereft, abandoned, forsaken; outcast, excluded; alone, lonely, lonesome, lost; estranged, alienated, companionless, friendless, unfriended, homeless.
4. disconsolate, unconsolable, sad, cheerless, joyless, spiritless, hopeless, despondent; dejected, downcast, low-spirited, downhearted, discouraged, depressed; melancholy, doleful, sorrowful, mournful; miserable, wretched, woebegone, woeful, heavy-hearted; brokenhearted, bereaved.
5. dreary, Literary, drear, dismal, gloomy, bleak, somber, dark, funereal, tenebrous.
-v. 6. devastate, lay waste, waste; despoil, Archaic. spoil, ravage, harry, pillage, plunder, depredate; ransack, sack, strip, rifle; destroy, blast, wreck, ruin, lay in ruins; demolish, raze, level, gut, obliterate, annihilate, extirpate.
7. depopulate, unpeople; make desolate, eject, drive out, expel, evict, dispossess.
8. depress, discourage, daunt, dishearten, dispirit; sadden, deject, weigh down, burden, oppress, trouble; distress, grieve, wound, pain.
9. forsake, abandon, desert, quit, leave, leave in the lurch, turn one's back on, repudiate, Inf drop, renounce, reject, disown, disinherit. desolation, n. 1. destruction, ruination, holocaust, demolition, ruin, havoc; spoliation, despoliation, despoilment, ravage, pillage, plunder, sack; rapine, ravishment, predation, depredation; depopulation, unpeopling.
2. devastation, waste, wreckage, ravagement; extermination, extirpation, obliteration, annihilation; nothingness, void, non-being, nullity, nonexistence, absolute, absence.
3. dreariness, barrenness, gloom, gloominess, dismalness, dismality, desolateness; bleakness, emptiness, darkness, blackness, bareness.