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Decimation is the noun: the destroying of a large part of something, or the result of that. You will see “the decimation of” forests, jobs, or a city’s old shops. It has a heavy, news-like feel. Though actually, in Roman history it named a specific army punishment: every tenth man in a unit was killed, often by the men who were spared, to the rest into obeying. History books still use that tight meaning; newspapers almost never do. The everyday English sense has drifted a long way from “one in ten”.
重創、大規模毀滅；歷史上的古義是「抽十殺一」
組成Borrowed from Latin decimātiō, the Roman army punishment in which every tenth man was killed by those who were spared, to keep order.
同家族的字
- decimatethe verb this noun comes from
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
decimationnoun/ˌdɛsɪˈmeɪʃən/
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The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
- By decimation and a tythed death; / If thy Reuenges hunger for that Food, / Which Nature loathes, take thou the deſtin'd tenth, […]
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The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
- And the vvhole Army had cauſe to enquire into their own Rebellions, vvhen they ſavv the Lord of Hoſts, vvith a dreadful Decimation, taking off ſo many of our Brethren by the vvorſt of Executioners.
- General Secretary Mick Lynch said: "It is crystal clear that the planned cutbacks on ScotRail and SWR are just the tip of the iceberg, as cynical employers use the cloak of COVID-19 to smuggle through the decimation of jobs and services on Britain's railways.
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A tithe or the act of tithing.
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mathematicssciencesThe creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence.
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computingengineeringmathematicsThe creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。