decimate

verb

1. (archaic)To kill one-tenth of (a group), (historical, specifically) as a military punishment in the Roman army selected by lot, usually carried out by the surviving soldiers.

   “God sometimes decimates or tithes delinquent persons, and they died for a common crime, according as God hath cast their lot in the decrees of predestination.”

   “Said to have been martyred as a Christian legionary commander of late Roman times for having refused an imperial order to kill one in ten (that is, decimate in the Roman meaning of the word) of the soldiers of another legion which had gone into revolt...”

   “...where Caesar threatened to disband Legio X after a mutiny. The men begged him to decimate them instead, and Caesar relented in the same way that Titus refrained from executing this cavalryman after his comrades’ appeal.”

   “Shall we decimate them? That sounds good, nice word. Remove one-tenth of the population!”

2. To destroy or remove one-tenth of (something).

   “...there will be eight hundred and ten laborers producing as nine hundred, while, to accomplish their purpose, they would have to produce as one thousand... Here, then, we have a society which is continually decimating itself...”

3. (broadly)To devastate: to reduce or destroy significantly but not completely.

   “[England] had decimated itself for a question which involved no principle, and led to no result.”

   “Um, some sort of power overload. I'm afraid it decimated your breakfast.”

   “They can be devastating to certain plants if left uncontrolled: a downy mildew of grapes decimated European vineyards during the nineteenth century.”

   “Captain Anderson: Commander Shepard did the right thing. We had to hold our fleet back to go after Sovereign. It was the only way. / Ambassador Udina: I agree, but this also presents us with an opportunity. The Council is dead. The galaxy is looking for leadership. / Ambassador Udina: The Citadel fleets were decimated in the attack. Their losses have made the Alliance stronger. If we step forward now, nobody will be able to stop us!”

   “What this attack represents is more powerful than the attack sequence itself, which is a double-edged sword, but let’s start with the positive. If what we see is any indication, Euron has decimated Yara’s fleet and cut it off before it was able to fetch the Dornish army.”

4. (obsolete)To exact a tithe or other 10% tax.

   “You forge theſe things prettily; but I have heard you are as poor as a decimated Cavalier [referring to Cromwell's ten per cent. income-tax on Cavaliers], and had not one foot of land in all the vvorld.”

   “In addition, an ordinance was published that “all who had ever borne arms for the king, or declared themselves to be of the royal party, should be decimated, that is, pay a tenth part of all the estate which they had left, to support the charge which the commonwealth was put to...”

5. (obsolete, rare)To tithe: to pay a 10% tax.

   “[I]t is a deed of higheſt charitie to help undeceive the people, and a vvork vvorthieſt your autoritie, in all things els authors, aſſertors and novv recoverers of our libertie, to deliver us, the only people of all Proteſtants left ſtill undeliverd, from the oppreſſions of a Simonious decimating clergie; […]”

6. (obsolete)To divide into tenths; to decimalize.

   “For example, in multiplying 3 by 0.2, the 3 units have to be decimated—that is, divided into 10 equal parts, obtaining 3 “deci-units” for each part, and then 2 such parts taken, giving as the answer 6 deci-units, or 0.6.”

7. (proscribed)To reduce to one-tenth: to destroy or remove nine-tenths of (something).

   “In this dramatic picture, the nation is literally decimated, and even the tenth which remains is subjected to a further destruction.”

   “African slaves were needed to replace Native American populations that had been decimated (literally reduced to one-tenth their size) by European conquest.”

   “In the New World, European colonists initially enslaved Native Americans, decimating the indigenous populations to one-tenth of their original sizes.”

8. To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)

   “A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full n-dimensional space.”

   “However, many times it is more practical to decimate existing high-res models because of time, money or manpower issues.”

   “Given this initial fine mesh, we smooth and decimate it to a desired mesh resolution.”

noun

1. (obsolete)A tithe or other 10% tax or payment.
2. (obsolete)A tenth of something.
3. (obsolete)A set of ten items.