Kill vs Decimate - What's the difference?
kill | decimate |
To put to death; to extinguish the life of.
(fiction) To invent a story that conveys the death of (a character).
To render inoperative.
:: Peter : Ask Childers if it was worth his arm.
:: Policeman : What did you do to his arm, Peter?
:: Peter''': I '''killed it, with a machine gun.
(figuratively) To stop, cease or render void; to terminate.
(transitive, figuratively, hyperbole) To amaze, exceed, stun or otherwise incapacitate.
(figuratively) To produce feelings of dissatisfaction or revulsion in.
To use up or to waste.
(transitive, figuratively, informal) To exert an overwhelming effect on.
(transitive, figuratively, hyperbole) To overpower, overwhelm or defeat.
To force a company out of business.
(informal) To produce intense pain.
(figuratively, informal, hyperbole) To punish severely.
(sports) To strike a ball or similar object with such force and placement as to make a shot that is impossible to defend against, usually winning a point.
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=February 4
, author=Gareth Roberts
, title=Wales 19-26 England
, work=BBC
(mathematics, transitive, idiomatic, informal) To cause to assume the value zero.
(computing, Internet, IRC) To disconnect (a user) forcibly from the network.
The act of killing.
Specifically, the death blow.
The result of killing; that which has been killed.
(volleyball) The grounding of the ball on the opponent's court, winning the rally.
* 2011 , the 34th Catawba College Sports Hall of Fame'', in 's ''Campus Magazine , Spring/Summer 2011, page 21:
A creek; a body of water; a channel or arm of the sea.
(Roman history) To kill one man chosen by lot out of every ten in a legion or other military group.
* ; from volume 1 of an 1835 edition of his works):
* 1989 , Basil Davidson, The Ancient World and Africa,'' in ''Egypt Revisited, edited by Ivan Van Sertima ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=IwEZ3-QtsDEC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&sig=CXM6Xb5lVuNuDNE7iYDzggSPgg4]):
* 1998 , Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=55KE-nNtTRUC&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&sig=pp2fv17oynz5w73_Cq1kKV3YgKI]):
To reduce anything by one in ten, or ten percent.
* 2007 , Russell T Davies, The Sound of Drums'', episode 12 of revived series 3 of ''Doctor Who :
* 1840 , P J Proudhon, ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=zVx5JLepYrsC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&sig=NuyvXEikIdgZAnc17xlO_irqsm0]):
(historical) To exact a tithe or tax of 10 percent.
* 1669 , , The wild gallant :
* 1819 , (John Lingard), History of England ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=_oyv8qYm2p0C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&sig=YkvtlMBSnPMQR9CNBVeJ6ZYKFuc]):
To reduce to one-tenth.
* 1998 , Israel, the Land and the People, edited by H Wayne House ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=cYAJwOR_WucC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&sig=JdWxs7ANZdt2Rsf8l3XvrufbUEY]):
* 2000 , Louise Redd, Hangover Soup ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=QQhiV7Q86WwC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&sig=af0g5hwuqIQ25x5HDgZ989XlV6A]):
* 2003 , Susan S. Hunter, Black Death ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=wRd8QpoVGtQC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&sig=VrjLlpEwSjIhvixx3vw_5zKJHVY]):
* 1788 , Edward Gibbon, History of (the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) volume 4 ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=NaILpSlC-b0C&pg=PA158&lpg=PA158&sig=RsQ4cf_TT_xkB1fHypjbWWAi1o4]):
* 2005 , Wilma A. Dunaway, Put in Master’s Pocket'', in ''Appalachians and Race , edited by John C Inscoe ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=hea586e-L0QC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&sig=X4GTYsenkf2pcv9rXG9dvFOep1k]):
To severely reduce; to destroy almost completely.
* , History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth :
* 2004 , Adrian Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome ([http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=TdKqfF9u4WQC&pg=PA245&lpg=PA245&sig=qrUZwfkR44lgJz-TrvZpYbrjSDI]):
(computer graphics) To replace a high-resolution model with one of lower resolution but acceptably similar appearance.
* 1999 , Mihalisin, Timlin and Schwegler in Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions'', collected in ''Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think , ISBN 1558605339, page 122:
* 2001 , Inside 3Ds Max 4 , edited by Kim Lee, ISBN 0735710945, page 56:
* 2004 , Geremy Heitz, Torsten Rohlfing and Calvin Maurer in Automatic Generation of Shape Models using Nonrigid Registration with a Single Segmented Template Mesh'' collected in ''Vision Modeling and Visualization 2004 ISBN 1586034723, page 74:
As verbs the difference between kill and decimate
is that kill is to put to death; to extinguish the life of while decimate is (roman history) to kill one man chosen by lot out of every ten in a legion or other military group.As a noun kill
is the act of killing or kill can be a creek; a body of water; a channel or arm of the sea or kill can be a kiln.kill
English
(wikipedia kill)Etymology 1
From (etyl) killen, kyllen, , (etyl) kellen.Verb
(en verb)- Smoking kills more people each year than alcohol and drugs combined.
- There is conclusive evidence that smoking kills .
- Shakespeare killed Romeo and Juliet for drama.
- He killed the engine and turned off the headlights, but remained in the car, waiting.
- (1978):
- The editor decided to kill the story.
- The news that a hurricane had destroyed our beach house killed our plans to sell it.
- My computer wouldn't respond until I killed some of the running processes.
- That night, she was dressed to kill .
- That joke always kills me.
- It kills me to throw out three whole turkeys, but I can't get anyone to take them and they've already started to go bad.
- It kills me to learn how many poor people are practically starving in this country while rich moguls spend such outrageous amounts on useless luxuries.
- I'm just doing this to kill time.
- He told the bartender, pointing at the bottle of scotch he planned to consume, "Leave it, I'm going to kill the bottle."
- Between the two of us, we killed the rest of the case of beer.
- Look at the amount of destruction to the enemy base. We pretty much killed their ability to retaliate anymore.
- The team had absolutely killed their traditional rivals, and the local sports bars were raucous with celebrations.
- You don't ever want to get rabies. The doctor will have to give you multiple shots and they really kill .
- My parents are going to kill me!
citation, page= , passage=That close call encouraged Wales to launch another series of attacks that ended when lock Louis Deacon killed the ball illegally in the shadow of England's posts.}}
Synonyms
* (to put to death) assassinate, bump off, ice, knock off, liquidate, murder, rub out, slaughter, slay, top, whack * (to use up or waste) fritter away, while away * (to render inoperative) break, deactivate, disable, turn off * (to exert an overwhelming effect on) annihilate (informal) * See alsoNoun
(en noun)- The assassin liked to make a clean kill , and thus favored small arms over explosives.
- The hunter delivered the kill with a pistol shot to the head.
- The fox dragged its kill back to its den.
- As a senior in 1993, Turner had a kill' percentage of 40.8, which was a school record at the time and the best in the SAC. Turner concluded her volleyball career with 1,349 ' kills , ranking fifth all-time at Catawba.
Derived terms
* in for the kill * thrill killEtymology 2
From (etyl)Noun
(en noun)- The channel between Staten Island and Bergen Neck is the Kill''' van Kull, or the '''Kills .
- Schuylkill''', Cats'''kill , etc.
Etymology 3
decimate
English
Verb
(decimat)- God sometimes decimates or tithes delinquent persons, and they died for a common crime, according as God hath cast their lot in the decrees of predestination.
- Said to have been martyred as a Christian legionary commander of late Roman times for having refused an imperial order to kill one in ten (that is, decimate [,] in the Roman meaning of the word) of the soldiers of another legion which had gone into revolt
- where Caesar threatened to disband Legio X after a mutiny. The men begged him to decimate them instead, and Caesar relented in the same way that Titus refrained from executing this cavalryman after his comrades’ appeal.
- Shall we decimate them? That sounds good, nice word. Remove one-tenth of the population!
- Out of nine hundred, ninety will be ejected, that the production of the others may be increased one-tenth. Here, then, we have a society which is continually decimating itself[.]
- I have heard you are as poor as a decimated Cavalier [referring to Cromwell's ten per cent. income-tax on Cavaliers], and had not one foot of land in all the world.
- In addition, an ordinance was published that “all who had ever borne arms for the king, or declared themselves to be of the royal party, should be decimated , that is, pay a tenth part of all the estate which they had left, to support the charge which the commonwealth was put to
- In this dramatic picture, the nation is literally decimated , and even the tenth which remains is subjected to a further destruction.
- comments about the Rangers’ decimated' pitching staff. Jay commented to the other drunks that although the word '''''decimated is often used to mean “demolished” or “destroyed,” it literally means “reduced to one-tenth of its former number.”
- African slaves were needed to replace Native American populations that had been decimated (literally reduced to one-tenth their size) by European conquest.
- Yet such population [viz. 300,000 males slain] is incredible; and the second or third city of Italy need not repine if we only decimate the numbers of the present text. Both Milan and Genoa revived in less than thirty years.
- In the New World, European colonists initially enslaved Native Americans, decimating the indigenous populations to one-tenth of their original sizes.
- It [England] had decimated itself for a question which involved no principle, and led to no result.
- He then declared that he would decimate Legio IX, but allowed himself to be ‘persuaded’ by the pleas of officers and men only to execute twelve of the 120 soldiers seen as ringleaders.
- A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full (n)-dimensional space.
- However, many times it is more practical to decimate existing high-res models because of time, money or manpower issues.
- Given this initial fine mesh, we smooth and decimate it to a desired mesh resolution.
Usage notes
The definition reduce by one in ten'' is occasionally cited as "the correct" definition, with ''severely reduce'' considered a misconception, arrived at by reading ''decimate'' as to reduce to''' one-tenth rather than ' by one-tenth. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage states that the nonspecific use of this word to mean devastate'' or ''severely reduce the numbers of is "nowadays the commonest use of the word in both British and American English, and it’s registered without comment in modern dictionaries." It also advises against using numbers with the term, as "They are redundant where it means 'reduce by one tenth', and where it doesn't they confound the arithmetic."[http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=UA5syoe1kc0C&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&sig=iBI36wGnmi-L71sDwui_l-rUwJs] The23 occurrences of decimate in the British National Corpus] — compare [http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=decimates decimates], [http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=decimated decimated], and [http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=decimating decimating— almost all clearly accord with the nonspecific sense. The only references to the historical sense are two complaints about modern usage and its critics. Neither of these actually uses the term to mean "reduce by one-tenth".