Decimation (3.23.2009)

Definitions of decimation on the Web:

• destroying or killing a large part of the population (literally every tenth person as chosen by lot)
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

• Decimation is the name of the late 2005 Marvel Comics storyline spinning out of the House of M limited series, that focuses on the ramifications of the Scarlet Witch's stripping nearly all of the mutant population of their powers, reducing a society of millions to one of scant hundreds.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(comics)

• In digital signal processing, decimation is a technique for reducing the number of samples in a discrete-time signal.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(signal_processing)

• Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = "ten") was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)

• The killing or destruction of a large portion of a population; A tithing; A selection of every tenth person by lot, as for punishment; The creation of a new sequence comprising only every nth element of the original sequence; A digital signal processing technique for reducing the number of ...