Today's Word "Decimate"
Published in Vocabulary
decimate \DE-seh-meht\ (verb) - 1 : To exact a tenth as in taxes or every tenth person of a population. 2 : To reduce substantially or even dramatically.
"The office staff worked far more efficiently after being selectively decimated"
Unlike "an-nihil-ate," which comes from the Latin nihil "nothing" and means "reduce to naught," decimate originates in the same Latin stem as decimal "a tenth." The Proto-Indo-European root dekm- is the source Latin decem "ten" (whence "December" the tenth month of the Roman calendar), English "ten," and Russian deset' "ten."
Comments