"Decimated" - what is the word we really want?

[AskNott]

It took several years of SDMB membership to do it, but I no longer get huffy about stuff like the change in the meaning of decimate. Usage changes. We cannot expect the English language to remain static. Well, you can expect it, but the language will spit in your eye.

[Animastryfe]

Decimate has been used to mean “to destroy a large portion of” sincethe mid 1600s. (There are three links here)

Note the mention of the etymological fallacy in the Oxford Dictionaries article.

[gnoitall]

@Johnny_Bravo

Seems doubtful. We only have the term “decimated” because it stems from a specific Roman punishment. If they’d had a different punishment where nine out of ten soldiers were killed then we’d have a word for that too.

And it wouldn’t come from Latin, because any civilization that willingly executes 90% of its military would be overrun by everybody and anybody else. Perhaps the Carthaginians, in this contra-historical case. And then Late Punic would have been the language of the Middle Ages. (And law, and medicine…)

Personally, I’ve never heard anyone outside of academia use the word to mean “reduced by one tenth,” and I’ve never heard ANYONE use it to mean “reduced to one tenth.”

In ‘real life’ I’ve only ever heard it used to mean “very badly beaten/damaged/destroyed.”

I have heard people use “decimate” to “reduce TO 1/10”, because they’re vocabulary-savvy enough that the recognize the Latin root of “deci”, and when forced to come up with a numerical approximation for “very badly beaten/damaged/destroyed”, they figure “reduced to a tenth of original” fits the bill.

Yeah, it has migrated pretty far away from its original literal* meaning. I guess because no one thinks losing only 10% is so bad. I mean, 90% is still an “A”, right?

*“literal”: another word that, it seems, is being violently wrenched away from is original meaning. But that’s for another thread.

[gnoitall]

@Inner_Stickler

A word, regardless of the history of the collection of symbols used to notate it in a writing system, has no inherent meaning. Whatever meaning it can be said to have is through the agreement of a body of speakers. As any given group of speakers ages and evolves, so too will the meanings of the words they use.

It seems very odd to me to observe people communicating without any difficulty and conclude they are somehow misusing words.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

[Inner_Stickler]

@gnoitall

*“literal”: another word that, it seems, is being violently wrenched away from is original meaning. But that’s for another thread.

:dubious:

[Inner_Stickler]

@gnoitall

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

If you think what I said is somehow comparable to this quote, frankly, I’m a little concerned.

[gnoitall]

@Inner_Stickler

If you think what I said is somehow comparable to this quote, frankly, I’m a little concerned.

I don’t know why, unless you’re using “concerned” in a way I’m misunderstanding.

The argument you cite (“we all understand each other just fine”) still runs the risk of my counter: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

[pulykamell]

@gnoitall

I mean, 90% is still an “A”, right?

Well, not everywhere. (At my schools, the cutoff was 93.)

*“literal”: another word that, it seems, is being violently wrenched away from is original meaning. But that’s for another thread.

If you search, there are numerous threads discussing “literally.” Or perhaps I should say, there are literally a bazillion threads discussing its perceived misuse.

[Inner_Stickler]

@gnoitall

I don’t know why, unless you’re using “concerned” in a way I’m misunderstanding.

The argument you cite (“we all understand each other just fine”) still runs the risk of my counter: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

If we all understand each other just fine then the word means exactly what we think it means.

[tim314]

Why not just say “Decimated 21.8543453267 times”?

[Melchior]

@Roderick_Femm

Yes, people use the word “decimated” to mean, roughly, reduced to one tenth the original size, rather than reduced by one tenth the original size, when the second one is the technically correct definition.

“The regiment was decimated” should mean that if the regiment started out at 1000 men it now has 900 men.

But if the regiment now has only 100 men, is there a word that means that, more or less precisely?
Roddy

Suffer enormous losses.