| 单词 | decimate |
| 释义 | 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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