The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decimate \Dec"i*mate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Decimated; p. pr. & vb. n. Decimating.] [L. decimatus, p. p. of decimare to decimate (in senses 1 & 2), fr. decimus tenth. See Decimal.]
To take the tenth part of; to tithe.
--Johnson.To select by lot and punish with death every tenth man of; as, to decimate a regiment as a punishment for mutiny.
--Macaulay.To destroy a considerable part of; as, to decimate an army in battle; to decimate a people by disease.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of decimate English)
Usage examples of "decimating".
Deaf to Her voice, they continued decimating each other's armies until Mna caused the cascading waters of Heavenly Rushing to become blood, sweeping away the warring Queens and their minions.
Your Khagggun have done too good a job at decimating our ranks and killing our idealism.
Someone had attacked the Yevetha, taking them unawares and totally decimating a fleet of considerable size.
The Defiant turned about, taking out the remaining capital ships as it went and decimating the enemy remaining in the area.
Deaf to Her voice, they continued decimating each other's armies until Müna caused the cascading waters of Heavenly Rushing to become blood, sweeping away the warring Queens and their minions.
A thousand years previously the Axe-Wielders, under the direction of their BattleAxe and the Seneschal, had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of trees, decimating the great forests of Tencendor.
The Icarii were far too good at decimating any surge or probe the SkraeBold sent southwards.
My students in my other life would have said that they’re “decimating” the Greeks, using that term for total destruction so loved by late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century lazy journalists and illiterate TV anchorpersons, but since “to decimate” was a precise term—the Romans killing every tenth man in a village in response to uprisings—and that would only result in 10 percent casualties, it’s fair to say that they’re doing much worse than decimating the Greeks.
Everyone in Ruatha Hold would have some part in this enterprise, for the plague must not be permitted to have a second chance at decimating the continent.
When rustlers had been decimating his herd of cattle and the local law enforcement hadn't been able to stop it, Webb had single-handedly tracked the four rustlers and followed them into Mexico.
She’d found the baby, abandoned and starving to death, in Croatia, just after Croatia had declared its independence from Yugoslavia, when the Serb army was already decimating pockets of the new country in the beginning of the bitter war.