Past tense of decimate
regular verb
The past tense of decimate is decimated. The past participle is also decimated.
Forms of decimate
| Base form (V1) | decimate /ˈdɛsɪmeɪt/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | decimated |
| Past participle (V3) | decimated |
| Present participle | decimating |
| Third person singular | decimates |
Decimated in a sentence
- I'm afraid it decimated your breakfast.1996, Star Trek: Voyager (TV series), Flashback (episode)
- They can be devastating to certain plants if left uncontrolled: a downy mildew of grapes decimated European vineyards during the nineteenth century.2001, Otis C. Maloy, Timothy D. Murray, et al., Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology, volume 1, page 379
- The ravages of war decimated the country: death, destruction and pestilence resulted from the bombings.From the entry ravages
- No wonder these conspiring factors decimated the ludodiversity of the children's play lore.2015, Yves Vanden Auweele, Elaine Cook, Jim Parry, Ethics and Governance in Sport: The Future of Sport Imagined, page 58. From the entry ludodiversity
- We participated in the famous "Turkey Shoot" in the Marianas, during which we decimated the enemy's forces.1979, Gerald Ford, “Boyhood—and Beyond”, in A Time to Heal, New York: Berkley Books, published 1980, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 57. From the entry Marianas
Meaning of decimate
- verb To kill one-tenth of (a group), (historical, specifically) as a military punishment in the Roman army selected by lot, usually carried out by the surviving soldiers.
- verb To destroy or remove one-tenth of (something).
- verb To devastate: to reduce or destroy significantly but not completely.
Questions about the past tense of decimate
- What is the past tense of decimate?
- The past tense of decimate is decimated.
- What is the past participle of decimate?
- The past participle of decimate is decimated.
- Is decimate a regular or irregular verb?
- Decimate is a regular verb: its past tense adds -d.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: decimate (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of decimate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/decimate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.