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.
Origin: 1590–1600; < Latin decimātus, past participle of decimāre to punish every tenth man chosen by lot, verbal derivative of decimus tenth, derivative of decemten; see -ate1
Related forms
dec·i·ma·tion, noun
dec·i·ma·tor, noun
Can be confused:decimal, decimate, destroy (see usage note at the current entry; see synonym note at destroy).
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 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.
to destroy or kill a large proportion of: a plague decimated the population
2.
(esp in the ancient Roman army) to kill every tenth man of (a mutinous section)
[C17: from Latin decimāre, from decimus tenth, from decem ten]
usage One talks about the whole of something being decimated, not a part: disease decimated the population, not disease decimated most of the population
c.1600, in reference to the practice of punishing mutinous military units by capital execution of one in every 10, by lot; from L. decimare "to take the tenth," from decimus "tenth" (see decimation). It has been used (incorrectly, to the irritation of pedants) since 1660s