decuman meaning (obsolete): definition, etymology and quotations

decuman

adj

/ˈdɛkjʊmən/

Etymology From Latin decumānus (“of the tenth, and by metonymy, large”), from decem (“ten”).

Obsolete Large; chief; applied to an extraordinary billow, supposed by some to be every tenth in sequence.

decuman billowsc. 1870, Frederic Farrar, The witness of history to Christ; 5 sermons, being the Hulsean lects. for 1870:

Historical Connected with the principal gate of an Ancient Roman camp, near which the tenth cohort of the legion was stationed.

noun

Etymology From Latin decumānus (“of the tenth, and by metonymy, large”), from decem (“ten”).

Obsolete An extraordinarily large billow.

Looking up suddenly, I found mine eyes / Confronted with the minster's vast repose. / Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff / Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat, / […] / Remembering shocks of surf that clomb and fell, / Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman, […]1869 December (indicated as 1870 January), James Russell Lowell, “The Cathedral”, in James Thomas Fields, editor, The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume XXV, number CXLVII, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 5: