Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use decimate in a sentence

22 example sentences · verb, noun

Decimate means 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. Example: “The ravages of war decimated the country: death, destruction and pestilence resulted from the bombings.”

Examples of decimate by meaning

verbTo kill one-tenth of (a group), (historical, specifically) as a military punishment in the Roman army selected by lot...

  • The men begged him to decimate them instead, and Caesar relented in the same way that Titus refrained from executing this cavalryman after his comrades’ appeal.1998, Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, page 263
  • Shall we decimate them?2007, Russell T. Davies, “The Sound of Drums”, in Doctor Who

verbTo devastate: to reduce or destroy significantly but not completely.

  • 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
  • If what we see is any indication, Euron has decimated Yara’s fleet and cut it off before it was able to fetch the Dornish army.2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the...

verbTo divide into tenths; to decimalize.

  • For example, in multiplying 3 by 0.2, the 3 units have to be decimated—that is, divided into 10 equal parts, obtaining 3 “deci-units” for each part, and then 2 such parts taken, giving as the answer 6 deci-units, or 0.6.1910 January, “Multiplication of Decimals”, in The Practical Teacher, volume 30, number 7, page 414

verbTo reduce to one-tenth: to destroy or remove nine-tenths of (something).

  • In this dramatic picture, the nation is literally decimated, and even the tenth which remains is subjected to a further destruction.1998, H. Wayne House, editor, Israel, the Land and the People, page 63
  • African slaves were needed to replace Native American populations that had been decimated (literally reduced to one-tenth their size) by European conquest.2003, Susan S. Hunter, Black Death, page 58
  • In the New World, European colonists initially enslaved Native Americans, decimating the indigenous populations to one-tenth of their original sizes.2005, Wilma A. Dunaway, “Put in Master’s Pocket”, in Appalachians and Race, page 116

verbTo replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically).

  • A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full n-dimensional space.1999, Mihalisin & al., "Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions" in Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision...
  • However, many times it is more practical to decimate existing high-res models because of time, money or manpower issues.2001, Inside 3Ds Max 4, page 56
  • Given this initial fine mesh, we smooth and decimate it to a desired mesh resolution.2004, Geremy Heitz et al., “Automatic Generation of Shape Models using Nonrigid Registration with a Single Segmented Template Mesh”, in...

More sentences with decimate

  • 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
  • The way he is decimating the CIA will more likely get him JFKed.2009 November 14, Eddie Haskell, “Obama resists Pentagon pressure on Afghanistan quagmire - will he be JFKed?”, in alt.fan.rush-limbaugh…. From the entry JFK
  • 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
  • Had any of them been dimidiated, tertiated or even decimated, the proposed election was void.1912 May 3rd, F. Madan, “letter to Sir William [Osler]” quoted by Harvey Cushing in The Life of Sir William Osler II (2010), pages 999–1,000. From the entry tertiate
  • Having decimated groves of cedar, quaking asps, weeping willows, poplars, and fruit trees on the last day of January, Alva C.1997, B. Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson's Legacy, page 233. From the entry quaking asp
  • Poverty, disease, hunger and famine decimated the population.1961 September 8, Ting Chiang, “Rebuilding Heroic Tamao”, in Peking Review, number 36, archived from the original on 16 Oct 2013, page 16…. From the entry Tehsing
  • Does decimate mean to overblow at the tenth?1948, The Galpin Society Journal, I-IV, page 69. From the entry octavate
  • It was the height of Covid: New York had been decimated by the disease, makeshift morgues and a ghostly city abandoned by anyone with the means to leave.2022 August 25, Emily Maitlis, “I’m not a disgruntled ex-BBC employee – but when an agent of the Tory party decides the broadcaster’s…. From the entry bestloved
  • According to Henry Aryamanya-Mugisha, director of Uganda’s environmental protection agency, overpopulation and overfarming on the Kenyan side of the lake are decimating these wetlands where the fish spawn.2009 August 17, Jeffrey Gettleman, “Ripples of Dispute Surround Tiny Island in East Africa”, in New York Times. From the entry overfarm

Meaning of decimate

  1. 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.
  2. verb To destroy or remove one-tenth of (something).
  3. verb To devastate: to reduce or destroy significantly but not completely.

Full definition of decimate

Questions about decimate in a sentence

How do you use decimate in a sentence?
Decimate is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The ravages of war decimated the country: death, destruction and pestilence resulted from the bombings.”
What is a short sentence with decimate?
“Shall we decimate them?”
What does decimate mean?
Decimate means 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.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: decimate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use decimate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/decimate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.