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Decimation   Listen
noun
Decimation  n.  
1.
A tithing. (Obs.)
2.
A selection of every tenth person by lot, as for punishment.
3.
The destruction of any large proportion, as of people by pestilence or war.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Decimation" Quotes from Famous Books



... epidemic goes through the island, the germs of which appear to be brought by the vessels, and the natives evidently have very small powers of resistance. We may here observe on a small scale what has taken place all over the archipelago in the degeneration and decimation ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... study of 494 small rodents obtained from 13 localities in the Park. Only six prairie dogs (all from Morfield Canyon) were studied. The negative report does not prove that tularemia or some other disease was not a factor in the decimation of the colony in Prater Canyon ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson

... question is comprised in Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, and First avenue, and Avenues A, B and C. It harbors a wild gang of lawbreakers, ready and willing to commit any kind of lawless act, in which the chances of escape are many and detection slight. Notwithstanding the decimation of its ranks by frequent and well-deserved trips to the penitentiary of its members, for every crime from murder down, it appears to survive, to the terror of the respectable poor living in the neighborhood and the constant dread of ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into effect) by decimation? place the county under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around you? and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable gift to the crown, in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... the making of gentlemen more fit for their books at other times." Indeed, it appears that, by an order made in James I.'s time, the junior bar was severely dealt with for declining to dance: "the under barristers were by decimation put out of commons for example's sake, because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas Day preceding, according to the ancient order of this society, when the judges were present; with this, that if the like fault were committed ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... a practice for the bar to dance before the Judges at Lincoln's Inn at Christmas, and in James I.'s time the under barristers were, by decimation, put out of Commons, because they did not dance, as was their wont, according to the ancient custom of the Society.[73] This practice is also mentioned in a book published about 1730, called Round About our Coal Fire, etc. "The dancing and singing ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... authorized 1,000 girls and as many youths, to be taken up for that purpose." Sir William Petty mentions 6,000 Irish boys and girls shipped to the West Indies. Some cotemporary accounts make the total number of children and adults so transported 100,000 souls. To this decimation, we may add 34,000 men of fighting age, who had permission to enter the armies of foreign powers, at peace with the commonwealth. The chief commissioners, sitting at Dublin, had their deputies in a commission of delinquencies, sitting at Athlone, and another of transportation, sitting ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... things and of men. Next came the turn of the smaller capitalists, till finally only the largest were left, and these found it necessary for self-preservation to protect themselves against the process of competitive decimation by the consolidation of their interests. One of the signs of the times in the period preceding the Revolution was this tendency among the great capitalists to seek refuge from the destructive efforts of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy



Words linked to "Decimation" :   devastation, destruction, decimate



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