# "Decimate". Bah, I say! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 8, 2007, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287 "2007-06-08T17:58:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/21 "2007-06-08T19:42:43Z")
I spit upon people who use ‘decimate’ when e.g. 9% or 11% deaths are involved. These people have no idea how important it is to keep the precise original meanings. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/22 "2007-06-08T19:48:51Z")
[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima] And further: do you notice when people switch the words \*decimate \* and _annihilate_ ? Are you bothered when you notice? Do you ever correct people or do you feel that’s a bit much? [/QUOTE] Oh, you don’t know the half of it. And by “half,” I mean somewhere between 10% and 90%. Literally. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/23 "2007-06-08T19:53:30Z")
What **Miller** said. Picking and choosing which words’ origins vs common usage you’re going to get all worked up about goes beyond pedantry, IMO. It’s a living, evolving language. If you don’t like it, go work for the French government or something. 😛 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/24 "2007-06-08T19:59:56Z")
You’re invoking the [etymological fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy): “a linguistical misconception based on the idea that the etymology of a word or phrase is its actual meaning.” Arnold Zwicky [specifically cites “decimate”](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001256.html) as an example of said fallacy in a 2004 post at Langage Log. > [@Arnold Zwicky](#): > > People maintain that “decimate” can’t mean ‘almost entirely wipe out’ because it really means ‘wipe out one-tenth of’. Or that “since” and “while” can only be used as temporal connectives, not as logical ones (meaning, roughly, ‘because’ and ‘although’), because that was their original meaning. (“Original” is, of course, a moving target here.) What’s going on here is a reluctance to recognize change, and that idea can be applied to all sorts of innovations: a [t] in “often” or an [l] in “walk” (note that these things can come around in cycles); the use of past forms in counterfactual conditionals (“if I was your father”); plural subject-verb agreement with “none” (“None of the students were prepared”), because “none” is really “not one” and therefore singular; and so on. Words being used now mean what they mean, not what they used to mean. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/25 "2007-06-08T20:13:33Z")
I’ve always thought that “decimate”, in deference to its origin, ought to mean “having a portion wiped out, but not completely destroyed”. But i probably haven’t been completely consistent in my own use, let alone correcting others. I can live with people misusing it to mean “annhilate”. My favorite comment on the word is an aside delivered by someone in **Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe** (which I highly recommend, although with a bit of salt): “How many languages even HAVE a word for ‘Killing One in every Ten’?” ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/26 "2007-06-08T20:18:39Z")
[QUOTE=Interrobang!?] …Words being used now mean what they mean, not what they used to mean. [/QUOTE] Thank you! Nice links, too. Everybody else get over it. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/27 "2007-06-08T20:47:32Z")
You’re overlooking the simplest solution to the problem: kill every tenth person who uses the word wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Litoris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@Litoris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Litoris)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/28 "2007-06-08T21:13:02Z")
Ya know what’s funny is that it would be easy enough to guess that decimate means 10% is destroyed (well, ya know, if you understand the language at all) but I never _knew_ that. I always saw “decimate” as somehow less than annihilate, though and never have used them interchangeably. Neither are common words in any of the conversations I have, so they both have remained blissfully beneath my radar. Yeh, you’re being anal retentive, but big deal, it’s your life. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287/29 "2007-06-08T21:30:00Z")
Shall we get into the "enormity"discussion as well? 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/decimate-bah-i-say/407287.md?page=1)