decimation
The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lotThe killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
» The army suffered a terrible decimation.
IMer · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
5 senses(Ancient Rome, countable, uncountable)The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
децимацияdecimacija
(countable, uncountable)The killing or destruction of any large portion of a population.
destroying or killing a large part of the population
(countable, uncountable)A tithe or the act of tithing.
(countable, uncountable)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.
(countable, uncountable)A digital signal-processing technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal; downsampling
Examples
2 sentencesThe army suffered a terrible decimation.
The disease caused the decimation of the population.
Translations
2 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
Borrowed from Latin decimātiō, a punishment where every 10th man in a unit would be stonedBorrowed 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.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: decimations| Singular | decimation |
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| Plural | decimations |
regular
Synonyms
1 synonymsWord family
1 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable