Current Usage of The Word
The word decimation is often used to refer to an extreme reduction in the number of a population or force, much greater than the one tenth defined by the "deci" root. It is frequently used as a synonym for the word "annihilate" which the OED lists as meaning "to reduce to non-existence, blot out of existence"
Read more about this topic: Decimation (Roman Army)
Famous quotes containing the words the word, current, usage and/or word:
“We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Ktaadn ... is an Indian word signifying highest land,... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)