decimate

Etymology
Borrowed from, from. As a noun, via.

Verb

 * 1)  To kill one-tenth of (a group),  as a military punishment in the Roman army selected by lot, usually carried out by the surviving soldiers.
 * 2) * c. 1650, Jeremy Taylor, Vol. I:
 * 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.
 * 1) To destroy or remove one-tenth of (something).
 * 2)  To devastate: to reduce or destroy significantly but not completely.
 * 3) * 1996, Star Trek: Voyager (TV series), Flashback (episode)
 * Um, some sort of power overload. I'm afraid it decimated your breakfast.
 * 1)  To exact a tithe or other 10% tax.
 * 2)  To tithe: to pay a 10% tax.
 * 3)  To divide into tenths; to decimalize.
 * 4)  To reduce to one-tenth: to destroy or remove nine-tenths of (something).
 * 5)  To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)
 * 6) * 1999, Mihalisin & al., "Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions" in Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, page 122:
 * A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full -dimensional space.
 * 1)  To exact a tithe or other 10% tax.
 * 2)  To tithe: to pay a 10% tax.
 * 3)  To divide into tenths; to decimalize.
 * 4)  To reduce to one-tenth: to destroy or remove nine-tenths of (something).
 * 5)  To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)
 * 6) * 1999, Mihalisin & al., "Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions" in Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, page 122:
 * A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full -dimensional space.
 * 1)  To divide into tenths; to decimalize.
 * 2)  To reduce to one-tenth: to destroy or remove nine-tenths of (something).
 * 3)  To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)
 * 4) * 1999, Mihalisin & al., "Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions" in Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, page 122:
 * A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full -dimensional space.
 * 1)  To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)
 * 2) * 1999, Mihalisin & al., "Visualizing Multivariate Functions, Data and Distributions" in Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, page 122:
 * A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full -dimensional space.
 * A decimate tool allows us to obtain a more coarse-grained view of the data over the full -dimensional space.

Usage notes
Senses of decimate other than "to reduce by one in ten" are occasionally proscribed but "to devastate" has now become a more common usage. The sense "to reduce to one in ten" is etymologically unsound and omitted by the Oxford English Dictionary but increasingly common.

Translations

 * Catalan:
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin: 十一抽杀
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto:
 * Finnish: desimoida
 * French:
 * German:
 * Greek:
 * Hungarian:
 * Italian:
 * Macedonian: десеткува
 * Middle English: tithen
 * Portuguese:
 * Serbo-Croatian: десетковати
 * Swedish:


 * Catalan:


 * Dutch:
 * Hungarian:
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:


 * Catalan:
 * Dutch:
 * Finnish:, lähes tuhota
 * Hungarian:
 * Maori: whakawhiri
 * Ottoman Turkish: قیرمق
 * Portuguese:
 * Russian: ,
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:
 * Turkish:, ,


 * German:, übel zurichten,


 * Finnish: alentaa resoluutiota


 * French:
 * Ido:
 * Italian:
 * Norwegian:

Noun

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