decimation.
The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
Meaning & usage
The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
A tithe or the act of tithing.
The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence.
The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence. A digital signal-processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal; downsampling
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.