dessiatina

English

Alternative forms

• dessiatine
• dessjatine
• desyatin
• desyatina

Etymology

From Russian десятина (desjatína, “tenth, tithe”)

Pronunciation

• IPA: /dɛsjəˈtiːnə/

Noun

dessiatina (plural dessiatinas)

1. A Russian measure of land, roughly 1.1 hectares.
   • 1849, "The Observatory at Pulkowa", The North American Review, Volume 69, Issue 144, July 1849:

     The tract of land given by the emperor contains five hundred and forty-five acres, (twenty dessjatines,) being two thousand two hundred and five feet long, and one thousand five hundred and eighty-two wide at its greatest breadth.

   • 1918, Aylmer and Louise Maude, translating Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Oxford 1998, p. 166:

     I go shooting there every year, and it is worth five hundred roubles a desyatina cash down, and he is paying you two hundred on long term.

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:

     Clouds, some in very clear profile, black and jagged, sail in armadas towards the Asian arctic, above the sweeping dessiatinas of grasses […].

Translations