Wikipedia:Decimation
The term "decimated" is a horrifying one, and evidently is sufficiently horrifying to satisfy many otherwise well-informed writers, so WP desperately needs to deprecate, and otherwise counter, its vague use:
- Sense 1 ought rightly to reflect the usage of the ancient Romans: a disgraced unit (perhaps units of various nominal strengths were eligible) and every tenth soldier executed. vVrey clear.
- Sense 2 should presumably be stated along the lines of "Man, we might as well have been decimated by our commander, bcz about a tenth of us bit the big Mortus.
- My candidate for Sense 3 (Your league-age may vary) is "Holy Tartarus, did one in ten of us survive?
- Perhaps Sense 4 is the height of imprecision: "Does the number even matter? We're gonna be lucky if we can organize a retreat to any degree."