• (British, America) IPA: /ˌdɛsɪˈmeɪʃən/

decimation (plural decimations)

1. (strictly) The killing or punishment of every tenth person, usually by lot.
   • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [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, 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.
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

• (the act of killing or punishing each tenth person) tithing
• (the payment of a tenth to the clergy) See tithe

• decimate

• Russian: децимация