Contemporary example of DECIMATE

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 09:58:55AM -0500, Chris Kern wrote:
> Recently I came across a contemporary, completely unambiguous example of
> "decimate" used to mean "destroy one in ten".  It's in the book _Battle of
> Corrin_ by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.  The context is a form of
> faster-than-light spacetravel that is unreliable enough to result in the
> loss of 1 in 10 ships that try to travel by this method.  A large fleet of
> such ships is travelling around the galaxy, and the inventor of the
> technology thinks:
>
> "Since she had never adequately solved the spacefolder navigation problem,
> many soldiers were losing their lives. Each time the battle groups jumped
> from one target to the next, their numbers were decimated. And decimated
> again before they reached the next target. Oh, the incredible cost!"

Do you have a page (and chapter) number for that?

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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