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   decimate

   /ˈdɛsɪmeɪt/

   verb

   • 1. kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of: "the inhabitants of the country had been decimated"
   • ▪ drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "public transport has been decimated"
   • 2. kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group: historical "the man who is to determine whether it be necessary to decimate a large body of mutineers"

   Word Origin late Middle English: from Latin decimat- ‘taken as a tenth’, from the verb decimare, from decimus ‘tenth’. In Middle English the term decimation denoted the levying of a tithe, and later the tax imposed by Cromwell on the Royalists (1655).

   Derivatives

   • 1. decimator noun

   Scrabble Points: 13

   • D

     2

   • E

     1

   • C

     3

   • I

     1

   • M

     3

   • A

     1

   • T

     1

   • E

     1

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