[pepsi_junkie]

If you're speaking latin to a roman centurian, it means to kill 10% of the troops as a punishment for cowardice or some other offense.

If you're speaking English 2,000 years later it means to severely damage or destroy something. Just as if you were speaking to Socrates you would refer to the play "Oedipus Rex" as a "goat song" (tragodia) but today you'd just call it a tragedy without evoking any image of suffering goats.

Language is far from immutable.

[WayneS]

I guess that depends on the meaning of the word immutable...

[Red Badger]

Language is far from immutable.

That's why Latin has been used for scientific work for centuries, it's a dead language so it cannot change....................