decimation
The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
Noun
- The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
- By decimation and a tythed death; / If thy Reuenges hunger for that Food, / Which Nature loathes, take thou the deſtin'd tenth, […] - c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in...
Synonyms: tithing
- The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
- And the vvhole Army had cauſe to enquire into their own Rebellions, vvhen they ſavv the Lord of Hoſts, vvith a dreadful Decimation, taking off ſo many of our Brethren by the vvorſt of Executioners. - 1702, Cotton...
- General Secretary Mick Lynch said: "It is crystal clear that the planned cutbacks on ScotRail and SWR are just the tip of the iceberg, as cynical employers use the cloak of COVID-19 to smuggle through the decimation of...
- A tithe or the act of tithing.
- The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of a source sequence.
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(signal processing) A digital signal-processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal; downsampling
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Origin
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.