decimation

English

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• (UK, General American) IPA^(key): /ˌdɛsɪˈmeɪʃən/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

decimation (countable and uncountable, plural decimations)

1. (Ancient Rome, strictly) The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.

   Synonym: tithing

   • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene v], page 98, column 1:

     By decimation and a tythed death; / If thy Reuenges hunger for that Food, / Which Nature loathes, take thou the deſtin'd tenth, […]

2. (generally) The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
   • 1702, Cotton Mather, “Book V (Acts and Monuments. […])”, in Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from Its First Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of Our Lord, 1698. […], London: […] Thomas Parkhurst, […], →OCLC, 4th part (The Reforming Synod of New-England, […]), § 1, page 86, column 1:

     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.

   • 2021 September 8, “RMT on "war footing" in response to workforce cutback threats”, in RAIL, number 939, page 15:

     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 jobs and services on Britain's railways.

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.
   1. (signal processing) A digital signal-processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal; downsampling

Coordinate terms

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

Related terms

• decimate

Translations

selection of every tenth person for death or other punishment

• Finnish: desimaatio
• Greek: αποδεκάτισμα (el) n (apodekátisma)
• Macedonian: десеткување n (desetkuvanje)
• Russian: децимация (ru) f (decimacija)
• Swedish: decimering (sv) c

killing or destruction of a large portion of a population

• Finnish: joukkotuho, joukkosurma (fi)

tithing — see tithing

creation of a new sequence comprising every nth element of the original

• Finnish: desimointi

digital signal-processing technique

• Finnish: desimointi

References

• William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1914), “decimation”, in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, revised edition, volumes II (D–Hoon), New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “decimation”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Anagrams

• medication