decimation

Borrowed from Latin decimātiō, a punishment where every 10th man in a unit would be stoned to death by the men who were spared. Used by the Romans to keep order in their military. Compare septimation and vicesimation.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˌdɛsɪˈmeɪʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

decimation (plural decimations)

1. (strictly) The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
   • 1607, William Shakespeare, The Life of Timon of Athens, Act V, Scene v:

     By decimation and a tithed death,
     ... take thou the destin'd tenth.

2. (generally) The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
   • 1702: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana - And the whole army had cause to enquire into their own rebellions, when they saw the Lord of Hosts, with a dreadful decimation, taking off so many of our brethren by the worst of executioners.
3. A tithe or the act of tithing.
4. (mathematics) The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence.
5. (telecommunications) A digital signal-processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal.

• (the act of killing or punishing each tenth person): tithing
• (the payment of a tenth to the clergy): See tithe

• (proportionate reduction, by single aliquot part): quintation (1/5), septimation (1/7), vicesimation (1/20), tricesimation (1/30), centesimation (1/100)

• decimate

• The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1914

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