Read the excerpt below and answer the question. The Dust Bowl years spanned 1930-1936, when a million acres of farmland across the Plains became unusable due to severe drought and over-farming. When Dust Bowl conditions devastated farmers, many defaulted on their bank loans, which helped lead to the widespread bank failure. Franklin D. Roosevelt called for restoration in America with a promise that there are better days ahead. Adapted from: www.thegreatdepressioncauses.com What is the best definition you can infer for the word "devastated" from the excerpt above? reduce to chaos to cause to be disorderly to cause to be helpless to bring to ruin

Explanation: The connotation of a word is the meaning given by the context or even by the readers (or listeners) based on their emotions or personal experiences. It is the antonym of denotation, which is the literal meaning of a word. From the context of the given excerpt we can infer that the word "devastated" means "to bring to ruin" because it says that after the farmers were devastated, they defaulted on their bank loans.