IIRC decimate always meant reduce by one tenth until the '90s when newsreaders started using it to sound impressive without knowing its meaning - ‘US forces have totally decimated the Iraqi army in Kuwait’ etc… I would sit there thinking ‘Hmm, doesn’t sound too bad then’.
Dylan Shiel is also interested in how the word Radical has evolved to describe the opposite of its true meaning i.e. central / fundamental, not extreme.
Century: “a subdivision of the Roman legion.” Forum: “the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business.” Tribune: “a Roman official under the monarchy and the republic with the function of protecting the plebeian citizen from arbitrary action by the patrician magistrates.” Missiles : “Gifts thrown to the crowds by Roman emperors.” Actor : “In Roman law, one that conducts a legal action.” Legion: “the principal unit of the Roman army comprising 3000 to 6000 foot soldiers with cavalry.”
Except apart from century (centum=100) none of those words contain a number denoting specific not approximate or total. We decimated Carlton in 2019, nah, we completely destroyed the farks.
Rubbish! So because a bunch of US newreaders totally misused a perfectly good word in the 90s, we have to accept we no longer have a word that means ‘reduce by one tenth’? But we do have yet another synonym for devastate?
Meanwhile two people can use Decimate and mean totally different things leaving the audience confused.
A perfectly good scalpel becomes just another hammer. Devo were right!
Did you even read it? I don’t know where you’re getting this US newsreaders in the 90s thing from.
That article refers to it being used differently centuries ago, and I take the word of Merriam-Webster over “Dude on internet” when it comes to etymology
It’s just a cool sounding word and people feel cool when they say it. Nobody’s going to stop using it to describe how awesomely they took out a lander full of aliens in Halo. But there are other words that actually mean what’s intended. Someone has to speak up for them before they’re completely decimated.
Dylan, as erudite as he seems, would also be interested in WTF people (including a great many here) do not know the meaning of words like “disinterested”, “pristine”, “enormity”, let alone always using “i.e.” when they clearly mean farking “e. g.”