How to Use decimate in a Sentence
decimate
verb- This kind of moth is responsible for decimating thousands of trees in our town.
- Budget cuts have decimated public services in small towns.
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Perfect can be the enemy of the good, and good repeated over time is enough to decimate the virus.
— Andy Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9 Aug. 2020 -
Lowering all drug costs by even 30% would decimate the industry.
— Peter Kolchinsky, STAT, 30 June 2020 -
Many in the industry say the shutdown, at a time when federal aid is running out and state aid is slow to disburse, will decimate their businesses.
— Emily Goodykoontz, Anchorage Daily News, 4 Aug. 2020 -
Aid agencies say Yemen is in dire need of assistance as the coronavirus threatens to decimate a health care system already ravaged by civil war.
— BostonGlobe.com, 2 June 2020 -
Residents expressed concern that an oil spill could decimate the area, known for its trout fishing and Lake Superior views.
— Laura Schulte, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3 July 2020 -
The Asian giant hornet, the world's largest at 2 inches, can decimate entire hives of honeybees and deliver a painful sting to humans.
— USA TODAY, 1 Aug. 2020 -
Such an increase in temperature would decimate coral reefs and the Arctic Ocean sea ice would likely completely melt at least every decade.
— Mary Kilpatrick, cleveland, 1 July 2020 -
Their offensive line has been decimated along with Nacua and Cooper Kupp also being out for multiple weeks.
— David Faris, Newsweek, 3 Nov. 2024 -
The music has been reduced to a soundtrack to countrywide gang violence that’s decimating a generation of Black and Brown youth.
— Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 26 Oct. 2024 -
These developments make investors nervous and the market cap of NBFCs is decimated.
— Prathamesh Mulye, Quartz India, 2 June 2020 -
Bouts of large-scale logging decimated close to a third of their forest in the 1980s.
— Erika Page, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 July 2023 -
As the sanctions decimate oligarchs’ wealth, could that prompt them to abandon Putin or change the course of the war?
— Stanislav Markus, The Conversation, 4 Mar. 2022 -
But that duo found a way (ways?) to decimate the Niners last Sunday.
— Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 25 Oct. 2024 -
Farm Act changes, Wilson claimed, would decimate the Glades.
— Hannah Morse, ProPublica, 4 Feb. 2022 -
The spread of an avian flu virus has decimated flocks of birds (and killed barn cats and other mammals).
— Arthur Allen, CBS News, 29 May 2024 -
Not only did the song decimate the Billboard charts and go six-times platinum.
— cleveland, 12 Aug. 2020 -
This same colony of birds was decimated the previous year due to avian flu.
— Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2024 -
His plan was to smuggle the trunks to northern cities to infect people and decimate Union forces.
— TIME, 4 May 2024 -
This will decimate the Russian military and end the war, and also solve the labor shortage here in the U.S.
— WSJ, 16 Dec. 2022 -
But that was before Elon Musk took over the company and decimated much of its staff.
— Marco Marcelline, PCMAG, 6 May 2023 -
These measures could decimate the small and medium-sized businesses that create 65% of on-the-books jobs in the country.
— Axel Kaiser, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2021 -
Only option is a trade that could decimate the Heat’s younger players.
— Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 11 July 2022 -
That, in turn, could decimate backyard gardens and crop yields.
— Jen Rose Smith, CNN, 7 May 2021 -
Rodgers, the future Hall of Famer, has the ability to decimate the Dolphins’ pass defense.
— Chris Perkins, Sun Sentinel, 22 Dec. 2022 -
The genista broom caterpillar had decimated a plant in record time.
— Arkansas Online, 23 July 2023 -
By June, word was traveling in rural parts of the state that the bill, known as cap and trade, would decimate the timber industry.
— Britta Lokting, The New Republic, 23 Aug. 2022 -
Resolve not to hide it anymore, and decimate the useless shame holding you back.
— Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 12 Nov. 2021 -
Napster was the scourge of the music industry in the ‘00s, when its peer-to-peer file-sharing software helped decimate record sales.
— Mark Sutherland, Variety, 30 June 2022
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'decimate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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