9 uses
- Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (23% in)
- Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:— SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, 1836.Chapters 7-9 -- The Chapel; The Pulpit; The Sermon (4% in)
- Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these.Chapters 7-9 -- The Chapel; The Pulpit; The Sermon (9% in)
- Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the snow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (92% in)
- Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (95% in)
- But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.Chapters 49-51 -- The Hyena; Ahab's Boat and Crew - Fedallah; The Spirit-Spout (81% in)
- And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves.Chapters 49-51 -- The Hyena; Ahab's Boat and Crew - Fedallah; The Spirit-Spout (83% in)
- If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels...Chapters 52-54 -- The Albatross; The Gam; The Town-Ho's Story (8% in)
- When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness!Chapters 130-132 -- The Hat; The Pequod meets the Delight; The Symphony (74% in)
There are no more uses of "desolate" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)