Sentence Examples:
Downing saw in his attack the beginnings of some deadly scourge which would sweep through and decimate the house.
It was necessary that they should be humiliated, decimated, and punished, if central power was to be respected.
Their financial resources have been depleted; their male population has been decimated.
He decimated our slender stock; but we did not begrudge it to him, for, when he began, he talked well.
They were composed chiefly of the descendants of the ancient plebeian families, decimated by wars and by misery.
The vanquished people were decimated, every second man being mercilessly slain.
They must have represented years of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China.
The magistrates had issued warnings against the assembling of persons together in the same building, and the congregations were themselves so wasted and decimated by death and disease that each week saw fewer and fewer able to attend.
Each of the wretched hamlets was surrounded, and the inhabitants decimated.
The ships of the invaders were captured or sunk, and their forces on land were decimated.
Were the present number of our professional nobles decimated, they would still retain a most salutary influence.
Very soon afterwards a great pestilence arose, and decimated the town's population.
One herd had been clubbed over a precipice, another decimated with poison.
Lyle and Jimbo gave these few lectures because the university policy of increasing administration personnel and research faculty while decreasing teachers had decimated the ranks of competent instructors.
Regarding the environmental influences, the way that unfavorable surroundings decimate the numbers of the plants of any one generation has already been noted, and it is typical of the vital situation everywhere.
They have even arisen to decimate the ranks of the faithful and to exterminate such as believed in Him.
The effect of wars in decimating the people has often been greatly exaggerated.
A leopard had only to come to decimate the people.
The army, broken up, decimated and worn out, had been obliged to retreat into Switzerland, after that terrible campaign, and it was only the short time that it lasted, which saved a hundred and fifty thousand men from certain death.
Whole bands of conscripts, guilty of endeavoring to escape, were tried by military commissions and decimated.
If he caught them on the steep ice between the two cedar clumps he could decimate them with ease.
One is to be called the "Jules Favre," one the "Populace," "We already hear them thunder, and see the Prussians decimated," says the Temps, and its editor is not the first person who has counted his chickens before they are hatched.
The procedure had dragged on for years, decimating the better class like a pestilence.
Even the natives are decimated at certain seasons by the most virulent fevers and dysentery.
The plague itself could not decimate so quickly, or war leave half the desolation in its track, as we are told is the immediate result of forgetting for a few short moments the cares of life in the enjoyment of a pipe of opium.
Famine, thirst and pestilence decimated the great armies upon which fell the united cohorts of the oriental powers.
He was not altogether certain he should not construct a bridge himself, since only when they charged upon his position could he hope to decimate the blood-desiring savages, who must still remain in menacing numbers on the island.
Thirty years later a plague had decimated her inhabitants.
As it was easy to foresee under these circumstances, the crews were decimated by scurvy.
They sent a decimating volley after them, and then dropped down on the ridge that they had won.
These were decimated on the spot, and the remainder imprisoned.
Rumors persisted that radioactive contamination was widespread, that the population had been virtually decimated, that the government had fallen, that the Naturalists had set up their own reign only to fall victim to internal strife.
After this last trip Humboldt went down to Vera Cruz, and having fortunately escaped the yellow fever then decimating the population, he set sail for Cuba, where he had left the greater part of his collection, going thence to Philadelphia.
What with sickness, deaths, and desertions, our ranks were becoming rapidly decimated.
This leads to endless murders and vendettas, which decimate the population nearly as much as the diseases do.
Last year the cholera quite decimated Newcastle, and was bad in many other places, but there was no special prayer, and now the illness is in London but not in any other place, a prayer is proposed by the Archbishop.
He said he was an outpost, and that he'd decimated us all long ago.
Aside from the fact that he was leaving one third of his force behind, Sheridan's corps had been decimated.
Soldiers who have been doing garrison duty are sent inland to fill the decimated ranks of various stations, and room is thus made for the recruits, who are at once put to work, enduring a course of severe discipline and drill.
The leaves of a certain evergreen were put to brew, and this medicine proved the salvation of the decimated company.
Here, in sight of the protecting ramparts of the city, this decimated people lived for a time secure.
The army, broken up, decimated, and worn out, had been obliged to retreat into Switzerland after that terrible campaign, and it was only its short duration that saved a hundred and fifty thousand men from certain death.
In the absence of the Commandant he sat in the Commandant's place, so magnificent a figure that our mess, with gaps at every table, looked like a banquet given in his honor, a banquet whose guests had been decimated by some catastrophe.
Each of these wretched townships was surrounded and their inhabitants decimated.
To add to all this, in 1576 the population had been decimated by a pestilence.
Is not even a more worthy object the punishment of Abdullah and the delivery of the enslaved and decimated peoples?
Anew, panic seizes the Franks; a fresh carnage decimates them.
They themselves were thoroughly decimated by their wandering lives, and the persecutions of the local inhabitants.
After the battle Bragg consolidated many of his decimated regiments and irregular organizations; and at the time of his sending reinforcements to Johnston, his army had reached the greatest effective strength.
They were received by a salvo of artillery, and the Horse Guards retreated decimated.
The nearest enemy column, decimated by the bullets, seemed to waver.
I hold that to carry our forbearance any further would be to expose our party to be decimated day by day.
And yet, it is at this supreme moment that the best patriots are decimating, mowing one another down, with blind fury.
The ounces used annually to decimate its inhabitants.
Vanquished and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation, the socialist party was crushed.
They may be decimated by the end of January, but by September the burrows are as full as ever.
Repulsed, decimated, scattered, they retreated in confusion.
This harassed the Spaniards, wore down their morale, and slowly but surely decimated their forces.
The population might be decimated rapidly if drought forced this species to cannibalism.
This cruel vendetta of theirs, which decimates the population, is horrible.
The great population was to be decimated either by famine, war, or pestilence.
Afterwards they decimated the companions of my kinsman, Alfred, and put him to death.
Pennant had previously noticed how spring fever used to decimate the west coast.
Disease and war have performed their fatal work and from time to time decimated the inhabitants.
Destructive lumbering, usually followed by devastating forest fires, was fast decimating the virgin pine forests.
As the forests are thus decimated, other and hardier species replace those which disappear.
The sun again aided their efforts and decimated the enemy's ranks as much with blasts of heat as did the storm of shot and shell, poured forth in a blaze of fire from every ridge upon which the attack was directed.
Absolute principles create division, and inspire the temptation to decimate, to expel, to kill enemies.
Divisions which had never known a reverse were decimated and routed by the practiced guns of the mountaineers.
Roman diplomacy, exciting tribe against tribe, was decimating them.
The decimating of Texan prisoners for trying to escape from their guards, as they had a perfect right to do, and the cruelties, or at least excessive hardships, which they were made to suffer in confinement, deepened the feeling.
Yielding more and more to its sanguinary frenzy, it finally decimated itself.
His company had been decimated again and again, but the ranks had been filled, and the stern young captain still held his place in front, as it wheeled into line when the regiment was called upon for new duties.
Various descriptions of the battle of Mons speak of the Germans advancing like gray clouds covering the earth, of "massed formation" moving across the open to within close range of our trenches, to be decimated by "murderous fire."
The Cardinal-Archbishop of Lyons had to enlist laymen to fill the gaps in his decimated clergy.
At a certain point, say books on tactics, the remnants of decimated forces must waver, give way and retire.
He was stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French army.
The posse, which had left Williamson the previous morning with flying colors and full of hope, was now decimated.
If this explanation seems scarcely sufficient, there is always some inexplicable disease to bear the blame: the birds had been going on famously when suddenly they were seized by a mysterious epidemic which decimated their numbers.
The air strength which the enemy had conserved for an anticipated American invasion was thus decimated.
Such embryos are decimated by a destruction which is quite indiscriminate.
His own elder brother had been killed in a duel, and he abhorred a practice which had so long decimated the country.
All generals, officers and soldiers, who capitulate in battle to save their own lives, should be decimated.
Moving rapidly from hill to hill they could decimate the invaders almost with impunity to themselves.
A relieving force was sent out to bring in the decimated column, utterly prostrated by the incessant fighting.
Want, exposure, and depression, speedily decimated that hapless company.
The people were decimated and discouraged, and on the northern frontier began to be at the mercy of savage raiders.
The rejection of this kind proposal was shortly followed by the outbreak of a malady, which decimated the inhabitants.
This little town was thrown back sadly by the epidemic which afflicted it in 1850 and decimated the population.
There they ran aground, the decimated crews saving themselves by swimming.
The first French line was decimated, and broke under the repeated onslaughts.
The fur trade decimated beaver populations.
People generally had embraced the idea that birds, beasts and trees could never become seriously decimated, and it was useless to offer them protection, which made it troublesome to obtain a verdict against offenders by either judge or jury.
The decimated host, now free to move in the unencumbered space, had taken flight.
The hawks which prey upon doves and hares, the crows and magpies, can thus easily be decimated.
In the Ninth division, which lay in our immediate front and which formed the center of the army, two regiments were entirely decimated and a battalion and a company of artillery put out of action, to a man.
The officers were shot down, and the men decimated, and each time the survivors sullenly fell back.
The ranks of the assailants were decimated at a breath.
I was told that standing armies were seldom maintained now, as it was no longer the custom of nations to decimate each other by public slaughter, but to trust to a system of international arbitration in the event of quarrels arising.
Uselessly I tried to tell him that at dropping leaden hail I could surely decimate a pack of Huns.