Meaning of decimate in English

decimate

verb [ T usually passive ]

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/ˈdes.ɪ.meɪt/ us

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/ˈdes.ə.meɪt/

to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely:

Populations of endangered animals have been decimated.

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(Definition of decimate from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

decimate | American Dictionary

decimate

verb [ T ]

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/ˈdes·əˌmeɪt/

to destroy large numbers of people, animals, or other creatures, or to harm something severely:

Overfishing has decimated the cod population.

We decimated public transportation in the 1950s and ’60s.

(Definition of decimate from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of decimate

decimate

By 1971 women, who had been almost a fourth of the jute workforce, were decimated to a bare 2 per cent of the workforce.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

There were areas that were decimated, but they were probably few.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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It was a rebellion against corrupt governing elites who impoverished the state and its people and decimated public services.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Year after year the pregnancies continued; the epidemics and decimating diseases came almost as regularly.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Here y is the vector of filtered response values, decimated to 10-ms sampling interval.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For want of works of irrigation whole populations were periodically decimated by famine.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The first came with the plagues of the 1890s that decimated cattle herds.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Proud armies have often been decimated, even destroyed, by epidemics; wars and thus the fate of peoples have been decided by them.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

With droughts and famines come many deaths; since funerals require the sacrifice of cattle, periods of high mortality can decimate the community's herds.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This sea urchin decimates kelp beds and creates barrens, thus completely altering coastal ecosystems.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Rather, it represents a mixture of productive and perceptual aspects, in that the errors originate in the productive domain but were decimated through the action of a perceptual monitor.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Furthermore, the high mortality of larvae on resistant wheat would decimate the parasitoid, and probably prevent it from slowing any increase in the population of virulent midges.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The 33storey hotel - which had a 77 per cent occupancy rate at the time of the blast - was decimated, its lobby covered in charred sofas, overturned tables and caved-in ceilings.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In the same vein, a fading ethnic group may adopt similar priorities to encourage a high birth rate to resuscitate a community decimated by war, disease, or intermarriage.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Worse still, in 1946 a sequence of summer drought and then harvest deluges decimated the grain crop, just as the ration-card system was being drastically cut back.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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毀滅，大量殺戮, 大幅削減…

Meaning of decimate in English

decimate | American Dictionary

Examples of decimate

Translations of decimate

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