"Disclosure Now"?
Posted on 07/09/2015 11:40:57 AM PDT by pabianice
Most people have a linguistic pet peeve or two, a useful complaint about language that they can sound off about to show other people that they know how to wield the English language. Most of these peeves tend to be rather irrational, a quality which should in no way diminish the enjoyment of the complainer. A classic example of this is the word decimate.
The complaint about the word typically centers on the fact that decimate is used improperly to refer to ‘destroying a large portion of something’, when the ‘true’ meaning of the word is ‘to put to death (or punish) one of every ten’.
There are several problems with this complaint. The first, and most obvious, is that language has an ineluctable desire to change, and there are almost no words in English which have been around for more than a few hundred years without taking on new meanings, changing their old ones, or coming to simultaneously mean one thing and the opposite (a type of word known as a contronym).
No. It means to kill one out of every ten.
How do you like “I could care less” when the speaker means he couldn’t care less?
Please ensure that you insure your vehicle beforehand.
...percent.
Too bad (for them). I reject their fakery.
Overwhelming usage has changed the meaning of the word decimate, therefor I cannot see how you can claim the word is “misused.”
Why don’t we look at the REALLY irritating change of ordinary words such as “Gay.” I weep for the deliberate destruction of a litany of lovely words which have been “misused” to the extreme. “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” is a far cry from the new meaning of the word; unnatural.
Homo-nyms are now more popular then ever. After all, they have the same rights as hetero-nyms!
I have to disagree. Language is constantly in flux, and the only legitimate measure of a word’s “proper” meaning is whether that meaning is universally understood or not.
Once it has achieved a level where the vast majority of English speakers will understand the usage easily, then it is proper usage. Language is defined by the people who speak it, not by the academics who document how it is spoken in dictionaries and grammar texts.
So even if the dictionary accepts it (destroy a large portion), and it does, you still won't?
...or even, ‘more unique’.
My pet peeve: improper use of “that” instead of “who”. Example:
He was the man that robbed the store.
It should be:
He was the man who robbed the store.
I hear this one butchered fairly regularly on the evening news.
I TOTALLY agree. It is one of my pet peeves as well.
Would you rather we stick with using a not well understood word, even if it means an increased number of preventable fires and accidents?
Which ain’t a lot.....................
It was a punishment meted out to Roman troops where one out of every ten men in a unit, say ten men out of a Century (or 400 out of forty centuries, or a full Legion), was selected at random and executed. For mutiny, disobeying orders, cowardice, etc. The French army in WWI followed a similar policy against units that refused orders to leave their trenches in suicidal attacks against German barbed wire and machine guns. It reduced the unit’s strength by ten percent, but presumably the remaining ninety percent would have gotten the message. Now it has no specific meaning except for some kind of horrendous slaughter.
"Disclosure Now"?
My pet peeve is the word ‘only’ placed in the wrong place in a sentence...................
For my own usage, no.
But that does not mean I do not know what those who continue to misuse the word are saying (including on-line dictionaries).
Lots of robberies in your area?...................
Irregardless.....
The beheadings will continue until morale improves!.................
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