Decimate

decimate







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–verb (used with object)

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. Obsolete. to take a tenth of or from.  



—Usage note 

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 (霍亂) 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.





C



decimate (v.) 

 

Today, decimate means "to destroy or kill or otherwise wipe out a lot of any group or thing": [Disease] and [hunger] have decimated the [population] of the Horn of Africa. 



When we first acquired this word from Latin, its meaning was "to execute one of every ten"; it was the way the Romans punished mutiny (艦艇反叛) in the ranks. 



Some commentators have insisted on that as the only allowable meaning, but in fact it has long been obsolete, and the extended sense meaning "to take away or destroy a tenth part of anything" is at least archaic and perhaps obsolescent. 



Even if you use decimate intending it to mean "to destroy one tenth," your audience will not understand it that way.  





　

Created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, graphic novel focuses on the preacher of a Texas town, who is struggling to get by and is driven only by his strong moral sense. When the city is decimated by an otherworldly force, he embarks on a journey across the country to take on the evil.





annihilation

decimate

cf. desiccate

Deluge