decimate
verb
[ ˈdɛsɪmeɪt ]
• kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of.
• "the inhabitants of the country had been decimated"
• kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group.
• "the man who is to determine whether it be necessary to decimate a large body of mutineers"
Origin:
late Middle English: from Latin decimat- ‘taken as a tenth’, from the verb decimare, from decimus ‘tenth’. In Middle English the term decimation denoted the levying of a tithe, and later the tax imposed by Cromwell on the Royalists (1655).
