dessiatina

English

Alternative forms

• dessiatin, dessiatine, dessjatine, dessyatin, dessyatine, desyatin, desyatina

Etymology

From Russian десяти́на (desjatína, “tenth, tithe”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dɛsjəˈtiːnə/

Noun

dessiatina (plural dessiatinas or dessiatiny)

1. A Russian measure of land, roughly 1.1 hectares.
   • 1849 July, “The Observatory at Pulkowa”, in The North American Review, volume 69, number 144:

     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, Leo Tolstoy, translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude, Anna Karenina, Oxford, published 1998, page 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 […]

   • 1996, Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, Folio Society, published 2013, page 119:

     The average peasant allotment, at 2.6 dessyatiny in 1900, was comparable in size to the typical smallholding in France or Germany.

Translations

a Russian measure of land

• Finnish: desjatiina (fi)
• French: dessiatine (fr) f
• German: Desjatine (de) f
• Russian: десяти́на (ru) f (desjatína)
• Swedish: desjatin
• Yakut: дэһээтинэ (deheetine)

Anagrams

• desiatinas