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Decimate   /dˈɛsəmˌeɪt/   Listen
Decimate

verb
(past & past part. decimated; pres. part. decimating)
1.
Kill one in every ten, as of mutineers in Roman armies.
2.
Kill in large numbers.  Synonyms: annihilate, carry off, eliminate, eradicate, extinguish, wipe out.





WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


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"Decimate" Quotes from Famous Books



... is stranger, left behind a name, For which men vainly decimate the throng; Not only famous, but of that good fame, Without which glory's but a tavern song; Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame, Which hate or envy e'er could tinge with wrong; An active hermit; even in age the child Of nature, or the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... well as his few if not scanty habiliments, is formed of buffalo-skins stretched over lodge-poles), justly complains of this shameful improvidence and cruelty. Were he to deal thus with an emigrant's herd, he would be shot without mercy; why, then, should whites decimate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... old campaigner, expresses himself very roughly. The point is, that we are after all only the trustees of the party. If we know that a certain step will decimate it ... clearly we have no right to take ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... sanitary science and medicine in the cure and prevention of that greatest disrupter of the social organism—disease. No sooner does the primitive human hive reach that degree of density which is the one indispensable condition of civilization, than it is apt to breed a pestilence which will decimate and even scatter it. Smallpox, cholera, and bubonic plague have blazed up at intervals in the centres of greatest congestion, to scourge and shatter the civilization that has bred them. No civilization could long make headway while it incurred the dangers from ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... that he was about to slip. Reed was just behind him, breathing hard from the climb, and then came the whole detachment. Warner felt a momentary shiver lest the guerrilla see them. If he caught them on the steep ice between the two cedar clumps he could decimate them ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler


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