The Interesting Origins of Decimate

Wondrous Words Wednesday

wondrous memeWelcome 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 

 

Julia Tomiak
I believe in the power of words to improve our lives, and I help people find interesting words to read. Member of SCBWI.

9 Comments

  1. 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!

    1. LOL. So can I Susan, with a giant Coke. Ouch- not good for the waistline. Great sentence.

  2. 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.

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