Posted on 11/16/2019 6:32:42 AM PST by Moonman62
It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why.
The issue that many people have with the decline and fall of the word decimate is that is once upon a time it had a very singular meaning, a meaning that is in danger of being lost forever to the vandals and barbarian hordes who are manhandling the English language through using this word to mean “to destroy a large number of.” The specific complaint is that decimate had the specific meaning, in ancient Rome, of killing one of every ten soldiers, as a form of military punishment. There are, it must be said, some problems with the argument that this is the only correct meaning today.
The first problem is that even if decimate did refer to the practice of killing one of every ten soldiers in Roman times, it did so in the service of Latin, not English. We have many words in English that are descended from Latin but which have changed their meaning in their travels. We no longer think of sinister as meaning “on the left side,” even though that was one of the word’s meanings when it existed in Latin.
Another problem with insisting that decimate should have but a single meaning is that very few words in English retain but a single meaning. An enormous percentage of the items in our vocabulary are capable of semantic multitasking. When a person uses a tricky word such as when, a, person, use, tricky, or word, all of which have multiple meanings, we use context to understand the speaker’s intent.
(Excerpt) Read more at merriam-webster.com ...
So if Trump Triple Decimates the number of liberal judges he only eliminates 26.9% ?
Good points made. Even if “to decimate” means to kill onr out of 1o, if the total number is 100,000, then to decimate means to kill 10,000, not an insignificant number.
When President Obama boasted that ISIS had been “decimated,” I wondered, why is reducing it by ten percent something to crow about?
Yes we do.
Speak for yourself.
Thank you.
It drives the anal retentive side of my mind crazy wen people misuse that word.
Don’t even get me started on “factoid”.
The word font was not originally synonymous with the word typeface. The font was a set of metal letters used to print words. Two different sizes of the same typeface were different fonts.
The word logo was short for logotype. A symbol such as the Texaco star was a trademark, not a logo. But the two words are now used interchangeably.
Unlike Latin, English is a living language and meanings change over time. People need to get over this decimate thing!
I can see this post is going to be filled with replies from FReepers who didn’t read past the headline.
You shouldn’t be thanking me.
A word is just a symbol for a concept. The same word can be used to symbolize several different concepts that are still somewhat similar in meaning.
Decimation is also a term that is used in digital signal processing where it means to reduce the sample rate by some amount, which can be any number not just 10, i.e. “decimate by 5”.
About a week ago there was a wonderful thread here that included much discussion (some of it heated) on the use of “decimate” that I was reckless enough to join in on. So of course I might as well do so again.
One of the things I realized later is if one sticks to strict, exactly-literal definition of the word it would essentially have to die out due to lack of usage. After all, if you’re in charge of a Roman legion you do in fact have the power to decide you’re going to kill every tenth soldier in your troop. But pretty much nobody can do that today - and those who could (like bonehead Jihadists) are unlikely to be satisfied with homicide at the 10% level.
And if you’re going to stick to a strict ‘one-in-ten’ tally, how often is that likely to happen as a matter of course? If some nut shoots up a movie theater, and kills 9 people out of 101, can we say he decimated the audience? If you’re using “decimate” in the strict sense, are you allowed to round off? Can anybody think of any situation in the past century or two in which exactly one-tenth of an assemblage was killed?
I didn’t know the root of the word decimate until I saw a show maybe 20 years ago about a Roman General who punished his men by decimating them or killing one tenth.
Although I flunked Latin in high school, I knew it came from the Roman word for ten or tenth.
Now it has taken on a more general meaning which is OK. Even if you know where the word originated, in colloquial use it means to really damage or reduce.
I’ve heard that “logo” was supposed to be an abbreviated form of “logogram” too. But ultimately, it comes from the Greek word “logos”, which means “word” (and that’s the word translated as “the Word” in reference to Jesus Christ).
I generally do....
Great point!
MW had a point that decimate can still effectively be used beyond its literal meaning, but then goes positively stupid. An historic, specific contextual use is not the same as a definition. “Ovation” comes from “exult,” therefore is applicable whenever someone is exulted. “Century” means a collection of 100, and makes sense for 100 years as well as 100 soldiers.
The interesting is that “decimate” had nothing to do with Roman soldiers, but taxation. However, Cromwell did seek to destroy the Royalists, so maybe it works anyway.
But use, “devastate.”
Decimate: reduce by number, not by 10,
because few examples only reduce by 10 or 10%.
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