decimate

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To kill one-tenth of (a group), (historical, specifically) as a military punishment in…

   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.
   • ...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.
2. 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. 3

   To devastate

   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.
4. ›+ 8 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      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.
   2. 5

      To tithe

      To tithe: to pay a 10% tax.

   3. 6

      To divide into tenths

      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.
   4. 7

      To reduce to one-tenth

      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.
   5. 8

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

      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.
   6. 9

      A tithe or other 10% tax or payment.

   7. 10

      A tenth of something.

   8. 11

      A set of ten items.

The neighborhood

• neighbordecimation
• neighborquintate