A smarter person would stay out of this argument, but it is an issue I find interesting, so I’ll stick my nose in it against my better judgment. If I recall correctly, “decimate” goes back to a Latin term, specifically regarding a military punishment in which one in ten legionaries would be executed. So yeah, it literally means the loss of 10%.
But that was two thousand years ago. For better or worse, words evolve. Without question, I’d have to say I’ve seen “decimate” used in its sloppy sense (as meaning a whole lot killed) much more than it’s literal sense. One can fight it (more power to ya), but I don’t expect that trend to reverse. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If I ask my secretary to make a copy of a report on our Konica Minolta machine, should I expect her to jump all over me if I ask her to get me 20 Xeroxes? We know what we mean, and that’s just fine.
And on a separate issue, kudos to the wag who brought up Dennis Rodman in relationship to this story (for those who don’t know, his nickname was “The Worm”).
I run into the same problem with the words nice and democracy but
why would we want to understand what anyone is saying anyway?
7
Devastate would be a much better and accurate word.
I'm turning into my Grandfather.../smile
I am by no means an expert on words, but I would like to preserve the original intention of a word. If a word has a historical context, why not keep it as such? At some point, someone used it incorrectly and others followed suit. Why do that? If you want to convey that something was “totally destroyed”, why not use an existing word that conveys that meaning (obliterate?).
Just last week I found out that my understanding of the word “penultimate” was totally wrong. Ask yourself what you think it means and then look it up. If you were right, you have a better understanding of some words than I do.