4 ms·

I always understood decimation as 90% less, not 10% less

• rsynnott 4y ago
  The term comes from a particularly extreme form of Roman military discipline where a military unit (usually a cohort) was split into groups of ten; one person in each group was then killed by the others. It was very, very rare. But, yeah, the literal meaning is to lose 10% (though that's not how it's used in modern English, in practice).