| 释义 |
WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2024dec•i•mate /ˈdɛsəˌmeɪt/USA pronunciation v. [ ~ + obj], -mat•ed, -mat•ing. - to destroy a great number or part of:Cholera decimated the population.
- (esp. in ancient Rome) to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
dec•i•ma•tion /ˌdɛsəˈmeɪʃən/USA pronunciation n. [uncountable]See -dec-. WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2024dec•i•mate (des′ə māt′),USA pronunciation v.t., -mat•ed, -mat•ing. - to destroy a great number or proportion of:The population was decimated by a plague.
- to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
- [Obs.]to take a tenth of or from.
- Latin decimātus, past participle of decimāre to punish every tenth man chosen by lot, verb, verbal derivative of decimus tenth, derivative of decem ten; see ate1
- 1590–1600
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. Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers:: decimate /ˈdɛsɪˌmeɪt/ vb (transitive)- to destroy or kill a large proportion of
- (esp in the ancient Roman army) to kill every tenth man of (a mutinous section)
Etymology: 17th Century: from Latin decimāre, from decimus tenth, from decem tenˌdeciˈmation n ˈdeciˌmator n USAGE
One talks about the whole of something being decimated, not a part: disease decimated the population, not disease decimated most of the population |