Welcome to Wondrous Words Wednesday, the great weekly meme hosted by Kathy of Bermudaonion.net.
Today I’m sharing a word brought to my attention by the Merriam-Webster’s “word of the day” email.
decimate \’de-sə-māt\ verb, from Latin decimus, tenth; to reduce drastically, especially in number; to cause great destruction or harm. For example,
German bombers decimated London during WWII.
Now, I realize a lot of you may know the meaning of decimate, but do you wonder how we got from the Latin root meaning “ten” to a word meaning “great destruction”?
According to Merriam-Webster, in ancient Rome, if a group of soldiers didn’t perform well, one tenth of their number would be executed to teach the rest a lesson. In fact, another definition of decimate is “To select by lot and kill every tenth man of.”
Pretty interesting, huh? I shared this tidbit with my seventh grader on the way to school, and later that day, his teacher saw me at a school event and said, “your son taught me something today!” She went on to explain the origins of decimate.
I smiled. So he does listen to me after all.
Word Nerd Workout
Use decimate in a sentence.
Thanks for stopping by, and keep learning!
Julia
When I pay tithing, it decimates my bank account. (I pay 10%) But I consider the blessings worth the decimation 🙂 Good word – I didn’t know the origin!
Oh wow, Julia — those Romans weren’t playing! Ok, my sentence:
“I can decimate a bucket of movie theatre popcorn all by myself.”
LOL. So can I Susan, with a giant Coke. Ouch- not good for the waistline. Great sentence.
Yay for Fountain Coke!
This is fascinating! On a lighter note, my husband and I decimated a carton of Blue Bell ice cream this week.
It seems a lot of us like to eat…
I was taught the definition of decimate was always to reduce by one tenth. But I almost never see it used with that definition, so I think reduce greatly is probably more accurate to usage. After all words are defined by usage first and dictionaries second.
Hi Julia!!
“I need to decimate the fiery darts of the evil one.”
Bless you sister! Hester, 😉
That’s quite a violent history, which makes sense for such a violent word. Thanks for sharing!