Decimation
WordNet
noun
(1) Destroying or killing a large part of the population (literally every tenth person as chosen by lot)
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From , 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.
Noun
- The killing or destruction of a 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.
- A tithing.
- A selection of every tenth person by lot, as for punishment.
- , V-v - By decimation and a tithed death, / ... take thou the destin'd tenth.
- The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of the original sequence.
- A digital signal processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal.