centesimate means to select one person in every hundred for a punishment. It carries an Arena rating of 1467, earned across 8 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, centesimate ranks #676 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #928 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,296 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,861 of 17,105 for Most Storied Words.
Why “centesimate” is a great word
To select one person in every hundred for a punishment, especially by lot. From Latin centēsimātus, the perfect passive participle of centēsimāre ('to select or punish every hundredth'), from centēsimus ('hundredth') + -āre (verb-forming suffix); first attested in English in 1753. Unlike decimate, which exacts a tithe of one in ten, or punish, a broad and unmeasured generality, to centesimate is to apply a punitive calculus with chilling, fractional remove. It is the rustle of one marked slip drawn from a hundred in a basket, the hollow echo of ninety-nine sighs amid one stifled cry, the administrative neatness of atrocity reduced to a percentage—a reminder that cruelty finds its most potent form not in rage, but in orderly, quiet arithmetic.
Etymology
First attested in 1753; borrowed from Latin centēsimātus, perfect passive participle of the Latin centēsimō (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from centēsimus (“hundredth”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix); compare tertiate, quintate, sextate, septimate, decimate, and duodecimate.
verb
- To select one person in every hundred for a punishment.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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