In ancient roman legions, a punishment for mutiny was "decimation" which literally meant randomly kill one in ten soldiers in the unit. "Deci" being latin for ten.
Gaslighting is the appropriate word when someone is intentionally lying to you about things you know, in an attempt to make you distrust your memory/senses. It is not the appropriate word for garden variety lying, or for propaganda, as both of those happen in situations where the victim does *not* know the actual truth.
Look up the definition. The colloquial definition has become standard. The "correct" definition (the one from OP) is now considered historical. Time is constantly changing the way we use language
I think you're underselling it - the unit being punished was divided into groups of 10 and drew straws. The short straw was executed by the other 9 soldiers in his group.
Actually a contubernium (ancient roman equivalent of a squad) only had 8 soldiers in it. The other 2 that were sort of counted were essentially slaves. Not sure if those slaves were included in the decimation process. Fun fact about this is that a century was composed of 10 contubernia, so actually a century had 80 soldiers in it, not 100.
As someone who has taught metric conversation, students have trouble identifying the difference between decameter and decimeter. Deca being ten meters, deci being one tenth. Decimating (killing one tenth of a legion) could be a useful way to remember. Kind of grisly, but it is memorable! Thanks!
It irks me something when people misuse decimate when they mean devastate. Decimation is a self inflicted loss of specifically 1 in 10, devastation is caused by an outside force or nature and can be any large loss.
Decimation was more than just a punishment for the tenth, the other 9/10 had to carry out the punishment, this in turn inflicts psychological wounds on the men as essential they're punishing their brothers for their own failures. It's devastating to the morale and the well-being of the whole unit.
It was part of the punishment. This way you knew that if you did something similar, you'd inflict suffering on your brothers (these people served together for years, eating marching sleeping together etc.)
The meaning of the word was expanded as far back as the 17th century.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-original-definition-of-decimate](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-original-definition-of-decimate)
Yes, but without such linguistic conservatism, how else are we going to preserve the meaning of words with hyper-specific contexts that almost never come up?
You say that now, but next time you have to order the punitive execution of one in ten members of your military unit, there’ll be no meaningful words to describe it, and then you’ll be sorry!
It's actually the same number of syllables and you won't need to explain to your soldiers that you mean the actual historical definition of decimate, so you're actually gonna save quite a bit of time.
It’s a known linguistic phenomenon that word meanings often drift into meaning the opposite of the original meaning
see “literally” as a modern example, now it’s dictionary definition features the figurative use.
You may not like it, but decimated’s definition is both the 1/10 thing and near total destruction
Fun fact: I named my cat Nimrod because he's a mighty hunter, apex predator, a complete tyrant, but also a goofy stupid little guy. He fits both definitions of the word perfectly
It shouldn't irk you, because you're wrong that it's being misused. Being pedantic about insisting a word can only be used how it was used centuries ago is not helpful to understanding word definitions.
Decimate now explicitly is valid to use to refer to any large loss, appears that way in probably every English language dictionary in existence, most of those list your "correct" 1/10th definition as archaic or historical, and it has been used this way for at least 500 years. The meaning of words in English change all the time, it's a necessary part of a living language.
There is a estimated 750,000-1,250,000 words in the English language and hundreds of thousands of those have multiple meanings, many of which some of the multiple meanings have fundamentally changed to be mutually exclusive. Throughout your day you likely use hundreds if not thousands of words "incorrectly" if only the original use is valid. A small sample of extremely simple common words included are Nice, Silly, Fun, Awful, Terrible, Clue, Flirt, Girl, Sinister and even the word Hello - the current usage of Hello is little more than one hundred years old. If decimate can't be used this way, none of those words can be used the way every English speaker alive today uses them.
Not just mutiny but also for breaking the line. If a legion fled without orders to retreat they would be decimated to restore order. Aka, if you stand and fight you might die, if you run you might die. Standing and fighting means you might die quickly and suffer less, decimation is very painful and done by your friends.
More to the point, they took squads of ten soldiers, made them draw lots, and the loser would be beat to death by their squadmates. It's not just 'one in ten', even if you didn't lose the draw they'd make *you* beat your friend to death.
When I first saw, I directly thought it's the punishment for adultery in Islam. In Quran it says if there are 4 witnesses, they must beat the adulterers with sticks 100 times.
I get the joke, but I still have to complain about the other five guys that are missing.
("Well y'see, the legion only had 4,995 soldiers at that moment, and these guys were the leftovers.")
>Are you suggesting if they'd had 4,991 soldiers, one guy would have been tasked with beating himself to death?
Only if he drew the black ball. (Or whatever "one chance in ten" mechanism they used.)
I haven’t seen anyone mention it but I’m pretty sure they used to make the other 9 kill the 10th as well just so it really sucked for everyone involved.
The person the 9 others had to kill was someone they knew, likely cared about and fought with for years at a time.
It was also just a matter or practicality. If they had a special group doing the beating you can’t beat 50 men to death concurrently it would take a long time and the people tasked with doing the beating would be tired by like the third dude.
I love the idea of the third guy, ready(-ish) to be killed, gets lead out to this special group and instead of being swiftly beaten to death with the full strength of several Roman soldiers there’s just a lot of puffing and mediocre *baps* while the murderee 3 throws a look to murderees 4-50 like “this ain’t happening, guys”
Roman generals would kill 1 in 10 men at random to motivate the rest of the soldiers. Marcus Licinius Crassus was probably the most famous one who did this.
Here's a Horrible Histories song about him: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUUqYclfokI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUUqYclfokI)
At random, as in the men chosen to die, not at random because the general felt like it. But, I mean, it was the Roman's so that probably did happen at least once.
I understand that they did it by contubernium. Like the smallest unit in a legion, the ancient roman equivalent of a squad, was a contubernium, made of 10 people. My understanding is that decimation was done by drawing lots within each contubernium and killing the loser.
Though the funny thing is that because 2 of those 10 people were slaves, there wouldnonly be 8 soldiers involved. Not sure whether the slaves would be counted, but my gut says no considering that the romans liked to count them when naming things but not when actually doing other military stuff.
Like a century was made of 10 contubernia, which adds up to 80 soldiers. So they are counted in name but were not part of the army as such.
This is where "picking the short straw" came from. Each squad of ten picked straws and the loser (short straw) was killed by his buddies - decimation as others have pointed out.
It was a horrendous punishment to be killed by your friends.
Old Roman legions with morale problems were subject to something called decimation, which is where every 10th soldier was brutally killed by the other 9 soldiers.
So, they’re saying only one in ten people will get the joke the same way that only one in ten Roman legionaries will get brutally murdered by nine other legionaries.
Decimation was the practice of punishing soldiers that deserted or ran away or didn’t follow orders when they were supposed to. every one in ten of the soldiers would be picked and then would be beaten with clubs and stones as a warning to other soldiers so they wouldn’t do anything like it again. The Roman generals wanted their soldiers to be more afraid of them then the enemy
Hello ladies and gentlemen. Mr. New Vegas here. You're all so great, we're gonna keep you listening all day.
Preliminary word is that Caesar's Legion has taken control of the Dam, and that the NCR presence in Nevada is severely crippled.
*Play the guitar, play it again, my Johnny...*
(Don't stop me now)
I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball
(Don't stop me now)
If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call
(Don't stop me now)
'Cause I'm having a good time
(Don't stop me now)
Yes, I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at all, yeah
In the joke, "this" doesn't mean the joke, it means the death by beating (decimation). It was a bit like layoffs, but the severance package wasn't as good.
Decimation means the loss of one man in ten. The origin is a form of punishment in the Roman legions, nowadays it completely lost the meaning of punishment and is used to mean suffering/inflicting heavy losses e.g. we were decimated by the enemy attack/we decimated them with our attack.
Decimation: The practice of killing one in every ten Legionnaires in a cohort or larger unit. Also sometimes practiced as low as the contubernium (squad) level.
The joke is the image shows the “punch line” of a decimation joke. One in ten soldiers would get beat to death by the others from their unit for a major military infraction.
It's a reference to a punishment in the Roman army called "decimatio" which is the root word for decimation. If a legion or otherwise group of soldiers did a particularly bad transgression like a mutiny or an abandonment of their colors then they'd be punished via decimatio. In said punishment the men would be divided into groups of 10 and would draw lots. The loser of said lots would then be beaten to death by the other 9 men.
Decimation. Roman military punishment, they’d divide everyone into groups of 10 and draw stones then the one out of ten that drew the different stone was beaten to death by the other nine
It’s an ancient Roman punishment called decimation. Basically if a unit failed in battle hard enough and survived they would be subjected to decimation where one man in ten would be beaten to death with a stick by the other nine.
In ancient roman legions, a punishment for mutiny was "decimation" which literally meant randomly kill one in ten soldiers in the unit. "Deci" being latin for ten.
now all ten will be killed... why you did this?
Gaslighting was invented much later
The term is gaslamping
Call the amber lamps
[Woah Black Betty!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDD9FmdmUN4)
AMBER LAMP!
AMB-GLAMPING
James Stronk. call the bondbulace!
Am-balance
God this shouldn’t have made me cackle so loud. You win the internet
Amber is the color of your amber lamps
311
What's your emergency?
Shades of color spread naturally.
But not for me
What do my lamps have to do with this?
I just call it Fancy Lying.
when you borrow someones car and leave it on empty and the gaslight is on, a real jerk move.
My dnd group refers to it as torchlighting
Underrated comment
*Oillamping
Maybe in 2000 years people will understand what it means and how to use the term correctly
No, they won't because nothing is happening in the apartment upstairs. The lights aren't getting dimmer when im gone. You're crazy.
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Someone keeps lighting the stove and leaving it.
“Alexa, turn down the living room lights by 5%.”
It wasn’t an apartment though. It was the boarded-up attic of Alice’s townhouse?
For 24 years I've been livin' next door to Alice...
Is she still 10’ tall?
Alice?
They literally will not use it correctly.
I hope it's sooner. I'm tired of not being sure if I'm using it correctly.
Gaslighting is the appropriate word when someone is intentionally lying to you about things you know, in an attempt to make you distrust your memory/senses. It is not the appropriate word for garden variety lying, or for propaganda, as both of those happen in situations where the victim does *not* know the actual truth.
Nailed it. I hate it when people use this term when they're just getting angry over a disagreement
You’re not
Understood. Going to revisit the etymology. Thank you
But they just told you you're using it correctly?
At the time they only had candlelighting
First they had to be invent bic lighters
Its Gaslamping i think
That's the mongol way. They got divided into squads of ten as well. If one dude deserted or fled in baggle, all ten got executed.
I would never flee a baffle.
Maybe for a waffle
Translation error?
TIL the origin of the word Decimate.
Yeah. People use it incorrectly all of the time. They use it to mean something like completely destroyed, which is incorrect.
in italian Decimare has now a different meaning, not "kill one out of ten" and more of "kill 9 out of 10".
Look up the definition. The colloquial definition has become standard. The "correct" definition (the one from OP) is now considered historical. Time is constantly changing the way we use language
Well then we can change it back!
You're not wrong but you're leaving out that the meaning of words can change over time
I actually thought I was wrong but hit save anyway lol... You are very much right
I think you're underselling it - the unit being punished was divided into groups of 10 and drew straws. The short straw was executed by the other 9 soldiers in his group.
Yet the picture is wrong. There should be 5 other guys joining in
If I had a nickel for every time I thought this...
You still couldn't afford one of their hamburgers
I’d pay you Tuesday for one
The other five guys are with Piper...
Opening a burger joint right? … Right?
Actually a contubernium (ancient roman equivalent of a squad) only had 8 soldiers in it. The other 2 that were sort of counted were essentially slaves. Not sure if those slaves were included in the decimation process. Fun fact about this is that a century was composed of 10 contubernia, so actually a century had 80 soldiers in it, not 100.
I think the rest of them are making art.
As someone who has taught metric conversation, students have trouble identifying the difference between decameter and decimeter. Deca being ten meters, deci being one tenth. Decimating (killing one tenth of a legion) could be a useful way to remember. Kind of grisly, but it is memorable! Thanks!
So "dec**a**mating" means killing everyone ten times over?
Or just killing 10 guys?
Deci is not Latin for 10, it is Latin for 1/10. Deca is Latin for 10.
*decem, deca and deci don't even exist as words.
They're more like prefixes
Deca is greek for ten. Δέκα. Decem is the Latin nominative.
Ahh dark but clever. Good joke.
This is shown in Spartacus. They pick rocks and the white ones are beaten to death by their fellow soldiers just like in this picture. It was brutal
Agree - brutal scene. That’s my first and only time seeing one acted out.
To add to this, the killing was done by his squad mates.
It irks me something when people misuse decimate when they mean devastate. Decimation is a self inflicted loss of specifically 1 in 10, devastation is caused by an outside force or nature and can be any large loss.
Decimation was more than just a punishment for the tenth, the other 9/10 had to carry out the punishment, this in turn inflicts psychological wounds on the men as essential they're punishing their brothers for their own failures. It's devastating to the morale and the well-being of the whole unit.
>It's ~~devastating~~*decimating* to the morale and the well-being of the whole unit.
One in ten remaining troops need therapy
And the other 8.1 soldiers have to act as the psychologists
Okay I'm gonna need a source on this cause it sounds mental. Kinda how the Chinese would kill entire family lines as punishment.
It's got It's own Wikipedia article.
It was part of the punishment. This way you knew that if you did something similar, you'd inflict suffering on your brothers (these people served together for years, eating marching sleeping together etc.)
The meaning of the word was expanded as far back as the 17th century. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-original-definition-of-decimate](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-original-definition-of-decimate)
One of my 7 brothers passed away. My family was decimated. 😁🤙
I learned this from watching “Monk”.
Or this is how a definition evolves. Language is not static.
Yes, but without such linguistic conservatism, how else are we going to preserve the meaning of words with hyper-specific contexts that almost never come up?
You say that now, but next time you have to order the punitive execution of one in ten members of your military unit, there’ll be no meaningful words to describe it, and then you’ll be sorry!
It will take you valuable extra seconds to specify '1 in 10.' Aint nobody got time for that ETA: /s
It's actually the same number of syllables and you won't need to explain to your soldiers that you mean the actual historical definition of decimate, so you're actually gonna save quite a bit of time.
It’s a known linguistic phenomenon that word meanings often drift into meaning the opposite of the original meaning see “literally” as a modern example, now it’s dictionary definition features the figurative use. You may not like it, but decimated’s definition is both the 1/10 thing and near total destruction
Alright, settle down there Nimrod, people misuse sayings all the time /s
Nyeah… what’s up, doc?
Fun fact: I named my cat Nimrod because he's a mighty hunter, apex predator, a complete tyrant, but also a goofy stupid little guy. He fits both definitions of the word perfectly
It's a very sinister phenomenon.
What does it have to do with left-handed people?
What a maroon!
It shouldn't irk you, because you're wrong that it's being misused. Being pedantic about insisting a word can only be used how it was used centuries ago is not helpful to understanding word definitions. Decimate now explicitly is valid to use to refer to any large loss, appears that way in probably every English language dictionary in existence, most of those list your "correct" 1/10th definition as archaic or historical, and it has been used this way for at least 500 years. The meaning of words in English change all the time, it's a necessary part of a living language. There is a estimated 750,000-1,250,000 words in the English language and hundreds of thousands of those have multiple meanings, many of which some of the multiple meanings have fundamentally changed to be mutually exclusive. Throughout your day you likely use hundreds if not thousands of words "incorrectly" if only the original use is valid. A small sample of extremely simple common words included are Nice, Silly, Fun, Awful, Terrible, Clue, Flirt, Girl, Sinister and even the word Hello - the current usage of Hello is little more than one hundred years old. If decimate can't be used this way, none of those words can be used the way every English speaker alive today uses them.
The dictionary disagrees with you.
Not just mutiny but also for breaking the line. If a legion fled without orders to retreat they would be decimated to restore order. Aka, if you stand and fight you might die, if you run you might die. Standing and fighting means you might die quickly and suffer less, decimation is very painful and done by your friends.
So... layoffs?
More to the point, they took squads of ten soldiers, made them draw lots, and the loser would be beat to death by their squadmates. It's not just 'one in ten', even if you didn't lose the draw they'd make *you* beat your friend to death.
The Romans used to do “decimation” as a punishment for mutiny, meaning that 1 in 10 literally “got it”
Come on baby, do the decimation
Do the decimation with meeee
You gotta swing your rods now!
When I first saw, I directly thought it's the punishment for adultery in Islam. In Quran it says if there are 4 witnesses, they must beat the adulterers with sticks 100 times.
Bonk! Go to horny jail
"And if they're a horny MF-er, you must beat off their stick 100 times." - Mohammed, being a great wingman for his buddy.
But there are only 5 there.... are they only gonna beat him half to death?
Don’t forget the one taking the pic
I get the joke, but I still have to complain about the other five guys that are missing. ("Well y'see, the legion only had 4,995 soldiers at that moment, and these guys were the leftovers.")
Are you suggesting if they'd had 4,991 soldiers, one guy would have been tasked with beating himself to death?
> beating himself and so our language evolves.
i beat myself regularly
>Are you suggesting if they'd had 4,991 soldiers, one guy would have been tasked with beating himself to death? Only if he drew the black ball. (Or whatever "one chance in ten" mechanism they used.)
> Only if he drew the [black ball](https://i.imgur.com/9SG4YAk.jpeg). [black egg](https://i.imgur.com/gdcOegI.gif)
The other 9 mutineers aren’t carrying out the punishment
They’re supposed to. That’s part of the punishment; 1 in 10 of you dies, and the other 9 have to do it.
Seems to me like it would be somewhat difficult to fit all 9 people around them to simultaneously beat them, so they might take it in shifts.
Seeing the other responses that actually make sense and I'm here thinking "Beaten?" "Be ten"
Be ten? *Used to* be ten.
More like “Be nine,” amiright folks?
You sunk my battleship!
The right amount of dark
I haven’t seen anyone mention it but I’m pretty sure they used to make the other 9 kill the 10th as well just so it really sucked for everyone involved. The person the 9 others had to kill was someone they knew, likely cared about and fought with for years at a time.
It was also just a matter or practicality. If they had a special group doing the beating you can’t beat 50 men to death concurrently it would take a long time and the people tasked with doing the beating would be tired by like the third dude.
I love the idea of the third guy, ready(-ish) to be killed, gets lead out to this special group and instead of being swiftly beaten to death with the full strength of several Roman soldiers there’s just a lot of puffing and mediocre *baps* while the murderee 3 throws a look to murderees 4-50 like “this ain’t happening, guys”
How goes the decimation Quintus? Good sir, we should be finished early next week.
Would have been a better joke if they had 9 guys beating him
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And instead of beating someone to death they were actually beating someone in the Sacred Band of Thebes way
https://preview.redd.it/u8hodch6vjnc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb6a33dabdd7c316cb7167fc35b1e62ba1bac03e
https://preview.redd.it/0sdidx31hgnc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bde357a37304dbf2ce105e0941eec5aa4d6f6b92
Are these the 4 out of 5 dentists?
Just cause you put dents into someone, you’re not a dentist, you know that, don’t you?
Made my day
underrated comment!
I scrolled past this and had to come back to make sure I had glanced the brilliant joke correctly.
You‘re welcome
Honestly wish I could give gold.
Decimation was a punishment to bring legionnaires I. Line. One tenth of the group to be punished would be bludgeoned
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Roman generals would kill 1 in 10 men at random to motivate the rest of the soldiers. Marcus Licinius Crassus was probably the most famous one who did this. Here's a Horrible Histories song about him: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUUqYclfokI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUUqYclfokI)
At random? I’ve only heard of it done as a form of punishment for mutiny or breaking rank in battle
At random, as in the men chosen to die, not at random because the general felt like it. But, I mean, it was the Roman's so that probably did happen at least once.
I understand that they did it by contubernium. Like the smallest unit in a legion, the ancient roman equivalent of a squad, was a contubernium, made of 10 people. My understanding is that decimation was done by drawing lots within each contubernium and killing the loser. Though the funny thing is that because 2 of those 10 people were slaves, there wouldnonly be 8 soldiers involved. Not sure whether the slaves would be counted, but my gut says no considering that the romans liked to count them when naming things but not when actually doing other military stuff. Like a century was made of 10 contubernia, which adds up to 80 soldiers. So they are counted in name but were not part of the army as such.
This is where "picking the short straw" came from. Each squad of ten picked straws and the loser (short straw) was killed by his buddies - decimation as others have pointed out. It was a horrendous punishment to be killed by your friends.
Old Roman legions with morale problems were subject to something called decimation, which is where every 10th soldier was brutally killed by the other 9 soldiers. So, they’re saying only one in ten people will get the joke the same way that only one in ten Roman legionaries will get brutally murdered by nine other legionaries.
Decimation was the practice of punishing soldiers that deserted or ran away or didn’t follow orders when they were supposed to. every one in ten of the soldiers would be picked and then would be beaten with clubs and stones as a warning to other soldiers so they wouldn’t do anything like it again. The Roman generals wanted their soldiers to be more afraid of them then the enemy
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Hello ladies and gentlemen. Mr. New Vegas here. You're all so great, we're gonna keep you listening all day. Preliminary word is that Caesar's Legion has taken control of the Dam, and that the NCR presence in Nevada is severely crippled. *Play the guitar, play it again, my Johnny...*
Look up the origin of the word “decimate” (hint: deci means ten)
Ten mates? I bet they're all enjoying themselves then, maybe with a drink or over dinner.
…
Deca means ten. Deci means one tenth
(Don't stop me now) I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball (Don't stop me now) If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call (Don't stop me now) 'Cause I'm having a good time (Don't stop me now) Yes, I'm having a good time I don't wanna stop at all, yeah
Pub?
Me and the boys going out clubbing
I get it, but my first thought was of Kung pow and the [stick beating scene](https://youtu.be/Os5iSxfyjAk?si=xpVE7vS4OovKCUCd).
In the joke, "this" doesn't mean the joke, it means the death by beating (decimation). It was a bit like layoffs, but the severance package wasn't as good.
Decimation means the loss of one man in ten. The origin is a form of punishment in the Roman legions, nowadays it completely lost the meaning of punishment and is used to mean suffering/inflicting heavy losses e.g. we were decimated by the enemy attack/we decimated them with our attack.
Decimation?
It’s decimation, of of every ten solders were killed (by their own units if I remember correctly)
Yo the sub kinda failed here. Why is 1/5 being “decimated”
Mob rule will always strip the individual naked and beat them into submission
https://youtu.be/kXfQ7AB-hEM?si=cePCVWhKWZWvkyr1&t=1166
this looks like 1 in 5, or 2 in 10
Oh man that guy was decimated.
Decimated
Decimation: The practice of killing one in every ten Legionnaires in a cohort or larger unit. Also sometimes practiced as low as the contubernium (squad) level.
Decimation…
Decimation of a legion
lol decimated.
This is one of my favourite jokes. People have already answered it
He said to keep hitting him, until he gave the signal
The joke is the image shows the “punch line” of a decimation joke. One in ten soldiers would get beat to death by the others from their unit for a major military infraction.
The word “decimate” being used correctly for once
Bro got decimated
Ahhhhh... History
Decimation was so evil and cruel.
The comment section is decimated. Beware the ides of march!
I’m decimated
This is what they do to the 1/10 dentists who DONT recommend your mouthwash
It’s depicting decimation. Roman soldiers would be forced to kill 1 out of every 10 in a legion as punishment for one thing or another.
The caption should be 2 in 10 considering this picture
The legion needs to work on there teaching still I see
It's a reference to a punishment in the Roman army called "decimatio" which is the root word for decimation. If a legion or otherwise group of soldiers did a particularly bad transgression like a mutiny or an abandonment of their colors then they'd be punished via decimatio. In said punishment the men would be divided into groups of 10 and would draw lots. The loser of said lots would then be beaten to death by the other 9 men.
Of course you dont understand it, only one in ten will. Just pass it to the next person and maybe they will get it
So this isn't a piper perri meme..?
“And you thought your boss was a pain”
Decimate
Employees hate this one technique.
Reminds me of Shaun of the dead?
So that's what happend to the 5th dentist 😬
Nothing to get. This doesn’t make sense unless you think 1/5=1/10
Seems more like 1 in 5
It's Greek to me.
Decimation. Roman military punishment, they’d divide everyone into groups of 10 and draw stones then the one out of ten that drew the different stone was beaten to death by the other nine
It’s an ancient Roman punishment called decimation. Basically if a unit failed in battle hard enough and survived they would be subjected to decimation where one man in ten would be beaten to death with a stick by the other nine.
Mel Gibson would say, "Needs more brutality... more blood!"