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.
• Few things can decimate one’s self-esteem like a bad haircut, and some men feel that taking their strands into their own hands only invites disaster.
  — Todd Plummer, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2020
• Just over a month after the space opened to the public, it was decimated by Hurricane Helene.
  — Joe Kottke, NBC News, 10 Oct. 2024
• Plenty of businesses have seen the pandemic decimate their prospects as entire industries shut down, or customers pare back.
  — Fortune, 17 Oct. 2020
• If the sago pondweed is decimated on the Southern migration, there’s nothing left for them, or other waterfowl, to eat on the spring migration.
  — Ashley Thess, Outdoor Life, 17 Oct. 2024
• Injuries and inexperience have combined to decimate a once-dominate downfield wall.
  — Andrew Krammer, Star Tribune, 10 Nov. 2020
• For those who watched coronavirus decimate the community firsthand, the vaccine's arrival is surreal.
  — Emily Woodruff, NOLA.com, 14 Dec. 2020
• Chakra says the currency devaluation combined with an acute cost of living crisis has decimated the local box office in Lebanon.
  — Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 15 Oct. 2024
• It’s expected to decimate salmon populations and eliminate the largest carbon sink in the country, worsening the impacts of climate change.
  — Wes Siler, Outside Online, 29 Oct. 2020
• If Miami’s core special teamers weren’t playing major snaps on offense and defense, the unit might have performed better, but this is what happens when injuries decimate a team.
  — Omar Kelly, sun-sentinel.com, 14 Dec. 2020
• Early in the pandemic, health officials were terrified that the virus would decimate America’s homeless, the half million people who live in shelters or on the streets.
  — New York Times, 23 Dec. 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
• 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
• Darpa is particularly interested in two creatures whose numbers have been decimated by humans but which are terrific wave-breakers when allowed to thrive: oysters and corals.
  — Saqib Rahim, WIRED, 11 Oct. 2024
• 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
• This fungus can quickly sweep through a vineyard to decimate a crop.
  — Elin McCoy, Fortune Europe, 11 May 2024

Last Updated: 14 Nov 2024