To: Otta B Sleepin
O'Reilly, you twit ... "decimated" means that only 10 percent of something is destroyed. Learn some freaking history.
3,078 posted on
03/27/2003 5:12:56 PM PST by
strela
("a' poppin' off at Pop's Sodium Shop")
To: strela
My dictionary has it's first meaning as, "to destroy a great number of."
3,083 posted on
03/27/2003 5:14:36 PM PST by
Fledermaus
(Saddemocrats on the Run!)
To: strela
Well, uh, actually the meaning has changed a bit over the years. From the dictionary.com web site:
Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group.
To: strela
O'Reilly, you twit ... "decimated" means that only 10 percent of something is destroyed. Learn some freaking history.When a Roman division was punished by decimation only 10% survived. Enough to spread the word about just how bad an idea it is to break Rome's rules. The survivors were the "lucky" ones who had to beat their comrads to death at the point of a sword.
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