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.
• 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
• With Japan's fleet decimated, soon the war would be over.
  — Matthew Moss, Popular Mechanics, 22 May 2018
• 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
• 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
• The injury, however, cast a pall over the rest of the half for the Lions, fully decimating the team’s backline on the way to a blowout loss.
  — Julia Poe, Pro Soccer USA, 8 Oct. 2019
• This same colony of birds was decimated the previous year due to avian flu.
  — Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2024
• Bird flu has decimated flocks — but not at San Diego zoos.
  — U T Readers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Mar. 2025
• His plan was to smuggle the trunks to northern cities to infect people and decimate Union forces.
  — TIME, 4 May 2024
• The Niners built a stars-and-scrubs roster and were decimated by bad injuries to those stars.
  — Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 6 Dec. 2024
• Injuries decimated Jacksonville, and the team is likely to have a top five draft pick in 2025.
  — Ryan Gaydos, Fox News, 29 Dec. 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
• Few feral bee colonies have survived the scourge of Varroa mites that can decimate colonies.
  — Denise Coffey, Courant Community, 1 May 2018
• But that was before Elon Musk took over the company and decimated much of its staff.
  — Marco Marcelline, PCMAG, 6 May 2023
• But McVay has a young team, a team that at one point was decimated by injuries.
  — Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times, 26 Dec. 2024
• 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
• The program has been decimated, but that people who are in charge will come right back at Israel.
  — Dan Gooding hannah Parry, MSNBC Newsweek, 24 June 2025
• But poaching for meat and ivory decimated the population so much that the elephants disappeared during the war.
  — Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, 1 Aug. 2025
• Our state leaders decimate our wildlife in the interest of development.
  — Ticked Off, The Orlando Sentinel, 15 Aug. 2025