[Billthedrill]

I couldn’t agree more but I suspect that we’re both peeing into the breeze. The price of sloppy usage is imprecision - if we actually were going to try to communicate pulling every tenth soldier out of the ranks and snuffing him, we’d have to use other words. That we’re unlikely to have to do that except in historical discourse is some comfort if you happen to be a soldier, I suppose. I want a word that describes killing nine out of ten politicians. Because the way things are going, we may need one.

[jonascord]

Poor employment of language with the misuse of words like "decimate" and "sinister" only encourages Leftist intellectual laziness.

The Left wants Newspeak. If people do not have the vocabulary, perhaps their thought can be controlled as well.

I've got a cure for Leftism using 1984 as a guide, but they won't like it...

[right way right]

LOL!

Virtually.

Literally. ...more words to abuse.

[the OlLine Rebel]

OMG. This is one of my husband’s greatest pet peeves.

In his case, it seems to be mostly because of his affection for Roman history, so he is all too aware of what it was supposed to mean.

[Svartalfiar]

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.

The problem with this is that words such as 'decimate' are being misused in a way that context is useless in determining meaning. To decimate something, how do I tell the difference between one-tenth versus a bunch? The only context that will tell is by literally telling you.