One of the biggest things that irks me on this board is the arrogant prescriptivist pedantry on display, even when respectable dictionaries contradict a claim. (dictionaries by their nature are descriptivist, but if the prescriptivist-language pedants have a bible, I don’t know what else it would be, so that’s why I am using one to back up my claims here)
There is no “wrong” about it. Yes, decimate does mean to reduce by 1/10th, and that is the linguistic origin of the word. But it is overwhelmingly used in this alternate sense, therefore the definition, by definition of a definition, is that of how it is used in English-language culture.
I’m sorry you think the fact that a word doesn’t mean today the exact same thing you were used to having it mean in the 1800s is a “nuisance”, but the definition of effete includes:
My last exhibit, from this thread, is Shayna’s post (#3):
(she is referring to the OP’s use of myriad as an adjective, instead of a noun, implying that only the adjective form is “correct”)
This one I especially take great joy in pointing out because Merriam-Webster found it worthy of a special footnote:
Speaks for itself. Fucking Thoreau used it as a noun. Eat shit, pedants.
I confess, I was going to express a little rec-rage over the decimate issue myself. Words mean what they mean, not what they used to mean, and meanings change over time.
Expand the OP to apply to most usage of Latin in Modern English. It doesn’t matter how Cicero pronounced it, or how Nero declined it, or what Cato thought the plural was. It’s a word in English now, and we can do with it what we will. That means applying Greek plural rules to Latin roots if we wish. So there!
I read some treatise on the human mind which suggested men (on the average) tended to have a larger vocabulary than women, but (in general) used it more prescriptively. Words, as used by men, tend to have fewer alternate uses. Women, by contrast, (usually) tease a wider range of subtleties from their smaller vocabulary by qualifying words words with varying tones, emphases, and contexts. I wonder, therefore, how many of these pedants of whom you speak are male.
Prescriptive language use is a futile goal unless you wish your salary to be paid in salt.
The whole decimate thing wouldn’t bother me so much if we didn’t have the word devastate, which does mean what they’re using decimate to mean and sounds so much alike that I can’t imagine why anyone would use decimate to mean devastate unless they were trying for something that sounded more obscure and erudite.
The city of New Orleans was seriously emotionally upset by Hurricane Katrina?
I know that, penultimately, the campaign to save decimate is a fight I’m going to loose. You can’t verse change. Still, it’s a cheap hobby and gets me in less trouble than correcting apostrophe usage on store signs with a Sharpie.
This is absolutely beautiful. Are you sure it wasn’t made up by someone just to yank a chain or two, or have academic standards dropped that far? I suppose (and fear) it was presented in good faith by people with limited understanding of neurology, linguistics, and gender differentiation.
The idea that salaries were ever paid in salt is an old error indeed, dating back to Ancient Rome but not quite as ancient as the word itself. (I believe it was Pliny the Elder who originally made the mistake, since slavishly copied by people with even less sense than he.) The word refers to money given so the solider could buy salt, much like ‘pin money’ refers to money saved up so a housewife could buy pins.
Nope. I have no idea whether the science behind the statement is well-founded. Why? Are you in the habit of speaking only in truth handed down from above? Do you independently verify every statement you make with a peer-review board?
Did you read that somewhere by somebody just looking to yank your chain, or have your standards dropped that far?
Whether salaries were ever paid in salt or not is immaterial. The general objection to prescriptivist language is that words change in meaning — sometimes we aren’t even sure why words came into being, or where, although we think we do. Forcing conformity based on what any one person or even a group of people imagines a word should mean is futile.
I’m probably one of the people the OP gets mad at, but the reason I try to drag language backwards is because it bugs me when there’s several good words that mean the different things, and they are slowly being smashed into meaning the same thing because of sloppy usage.
I was waxing sarcastic about people who use chastity, abstinence, and celibacy interchangeably just other day.
I’m not sorry and I won’t stop.
