Image by Ahmed akacha
-
发音：[ˈdesɪˌmeɪt]
-
例句：
- The word decimate originally means to kill one-tenth of a group, especially as a form of punishment in the Roman army. However, today it is more commonly used to mean to severely reduce or destroy a large proportion of something, whether it be a population, a resource, or an organization.
- Why didn’t Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians have the power to decimate, subjugate, or exterminate Europeans and Asians?
- The pandemic has caused significant damage to movie theaters of all sizes, decimating their business.
- More than 1,000 homes were burned, hundreds more were looted and destroyed, and Black Wall Street was decimated.
- Due to lockdowns, a small business owner’s revenue had been decimated, leaving her with difficult decisions to make regarding her financial security and that of her 14 employees.
- The mainstream view attributes the decline of a species to hunting, but newer research suggests that their population began to decimate long before humans arrived.
- With layoffs and resignations decimating Twitter’s engineering team, Mr. Musk relied on Tesla and SpaceX employees to handle technical matters.
-
解释：
- Decimate这个单词做动词使用，其表示“to cause great destruction or harm to something”这一含义，即“大量毁灭/严重破坏/大大削弱”，与demolish/devastate/destroy/ruin这些单词构成近义词。
- 具体使用场景如下：
- Despite the US government’s efforts to decimate the Navajo Nation, which has resulted in generations without safe water, the culture continues to endure.（尽管美国政府努力摧毁纳瓦霍民族，导致几代人没有安全用水，但这种文化仍在继续。）
–Culture - With the arrival of the internet, Google and Facebook became intermediaries between publishers and readers, leveraging their position to dominate digital advertising and decimate newspapers’ advertising business model.（随着互联网的到来，谷歌和Facebook成为出版商和读者之间的中介，利用它们的地位主导数字广告并摧毁报纸的广告商业模式。）
–Technology - The Department of Agriculture has developed the first vaccine for honeybees, which could pave the way for controlling viruses and pests that decimate bee populations globally.（农业部已经开发出第一种蜜蜂疫苗，这可能为控制导致全球蜜蜂种群大量减少的病毒和害虫铺平道路。）
–Science - The team has been severely affected by a coronavirus outbreak, which has decimated its roster, impacting more than two dozen players, eight assistant coaches, and multiple staff members.（该团队受到冠状病毒爆发的严重影响，该爆发摧毁了其选拔名单，影响了二十多名球员、八名助理教练和多名工作人员。）
–Sports - When the pandemic decimated Mexico’s tourism industry and artist incomes, he organized a competition for artists and published a book featuring 27 of their entries.（当大流行摧毁了墨西哥的旅游业和艺术家收入时，他组织了一场艺术家比赛，并出版了一本收录了 27 件作品的书。）
–Arts
