I don't get how you would use the word decimate as "kills 1/10th of"-- I can't think of any way that that would be measurable. Unless you were in an army, counted off by 10s and then killed.

Unless you were in an army, counted off by 10s and then killed.

Which is pretty much the origin of the word, except I think it was the population, yeah? Conquering Romans were not nice people.

It originates with the Roman practice of punishing a unit by dividing it into groups of 10 and executing one person from each.

Really? We should be using it in the sense of the Roman practice? By the time the bubonic plague hit Europe it was being used in the sense of "destroy a large portion of the population."

Oh- OK. That is really too specific to use, so I can totally understand how it means "devastated".

You can still use decimate to mean 1/10th killed. Lots of words have more than one and even contradictory meanings. I kind of wanted someone to bring that up in the "illin" crossword puzzle controversy (aside: I am about a month behind in my NYTimes crosswords and just got to that puzzle recently. That was the first answer I got. Felt like cheating).

To be clear, I don't cringe when I hear "begs the question" because it's wrong. It's more a reminder that my grasp of logical fallacies is shaky, these days, and I find that disturbing.

I don't see any reason to think that no one will ever want to say "a small (but not unnoticeable) portion was eliminated" in one word. I like having words for stuff.

In other research, I found grammarerrors.com, and I think it's pretty funny that I'm bothered that she doesn't restrict herself to grammar errors, but that's what she implies she does. However, I haven't actually read any examples (I've only looked cursorily) that I actually give a fuck about. By my read, she's overreacting to everything but her URL and mission statement (she does expand on what she means, but her equivalence of that all to "grammar" is what bugs me unduly). I am tarred with the brush I wield.

And the rape guy has stopped crying into his pullow about his incredibly sorry lot as a potential rapist, and is now agitating for a blood alcohol limit for consensual sex. I'm waiting with bated breath to see how he intends to implement his master plan.

Chastity belts with those little tubes you blow into to prove you are below the limit engineered into the lock?

An epidemic could decimate. A bus crash could decimate a team.

My physics background makes my head immediately go to tenths, not utter devastation.