Do I win a wallaby?

Means every 10th was killed (although common usage really means a significant proportion; language changes over time so the original literal meaning isn't it's only meaning any more).

Technically when the population dropped from 100% to 90% it was decimated, then when it dropped from 90% to 81% it was decimated again, then from 81% to 73% it was decimated a third time, then from 73% to 65%, 59%, etc. etc. until you hit 30%

So the population HAS been decimated (at least eleven times).

What's that?

it's a Wallaby* in a box.

What are you going to do with it?

I'm going to f..k it and eat it.

*It was a fox in the orginal comic strip in Viz - rhymes with "box"

A scrub wallaby would be nice:-)

septuaginated is my guess as to the correct spelling, though I'm no latin whiz...

Percentage decline is one tenth - 90% remaining.

when searching for a word that means "to reduce by 70%", we often think of the word "decimate", which means "to eliminate every 10th" in its original form, as it was a Roman concept. The prefix "deci" is most commonly defined today by the SI units, where it is a prefix meaning 1/10th. Strictly speaking, there are no prefixes other than a power of 10, so there is no way to express "to reduce by 70%" in strictly modern language terms.

however, decimate is an old roman term, with "deci" from the latin "decimus". Therefore, if we can find a roman naming system to express 70, we can properly express the term "to reduce by 70%".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals -

Romans used the word "septem" to convey seven, as they used "decem" to convey ten. So, we might reasonably express the prefix 70 as "septideci". But even this is probably insufficient for the problem at hand. Does "septidecimate" refer to destroying 70 out of 100, or rather one out of 70? Since decimate means to destroy one out "deci" or ten, it is most likely the latter, and we have not yet found a word to express "to reduce by 70%".

What we require is two or more numbers that could multiply to reach 7/10. This can be expressed as:

7/10 = (n-1)/n * (m-1)/m * ...

It so happens that 1/4th and 1/15th fit the bill. If you reduce a population successively by 1/5th and 1/8th, you will end up with a remainder of 4/5 * 7/8 = 7/10. The roman for 1/5th is "quinque", and the roman for 1/8th is "sescuncia". Therefore the word "quinqui-sescuncimate" should be the one you are looking for. Can I have my wombat now?

Oh and the number pairs 4 and 15, and 5 and 8 work equally well, it is just harder to find a proper word for 15 in roman.

Messed up; quinqui-sescuncimate refers to reducing TO 70%, not BY 70%. Adjusting for my error, it requires three prefixes in sequence to reach the proper word, 1/3rd, 1/2, and 1/10th fit the bill quite nicely. So we have "semis" + "triens" + "decems" or my best guess is "semitridecimate"

That's the single word to describe the local population. FUCKED.

Now give me my Bennett's wallaby (preferably one of the ones NOT from my back yard as that's just cheating) while I possum stomp some nointer's head with my Blunnies.

They been "Dodo'd".