decimate

decimate
—decimation, n. —decimator, n.
/des"euh mayt'/, v.t., decimated, decimating.
1. to destroy a great number or proportion of: The population was decimated by a plague.
2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
3. Obs. to take a tenth of or from.
[1590-1600; < L decimatus, ptp. of decimare to punish every tenth man chosen by lot, v. deriv. of decimus tenth, deriv. of decem TEN; see ATE1]
Usage. The earliest English sense of DECIMATE is "to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit)." The extended sense "destroy a great number or proportion of" developed in the 19th century: Cholera decimated the urban population. Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, DECIMATE is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • decimate — [v] destroy annihilate, butcher*, commit genocide, execute, exterminate, kill off, massacre, obliterate, slaughter, stamp out, wipe out; concept 252 …   New thesaurus

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  • decimate — [[t]de̱sɪmeɪt[/t]] decimates, decimating, decimated 1) VERB To decimate something such as a group of people or animals means to destroy a very large number of them. [V n] The pollution could decimate the river s thriving population of kingfishers …   English dictionary

  • decimate — verb Decimate is used with these nouns as the subject: ↑injury Decimate is used with these nouns as the object: ↑army …   Collocations dictionary

  • decimate — UK [ˈdesɪmeɪt] / US [ˈdesɪˌmeɪt] verb [transitive] Word forms decimate : present tense I/you/we/they decimate he/she/it decimates present participle decimating past tense decimated past participle decimated to spoil or destroy something, for… …   English dictionary

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