I was always taught that 'decimate' means to reduce by ten per cent, from the latin word to describe the Romans' habit of putting to death every tenth man when dealing with a mutiny or insurrection. But nowadays the word is so often misused that it seems to have come to mean "to reduce by 90 per cent" or "to destroy by 90 per cent", ie leaving 10 per cent or almost nothing. Reports of that recent train explosion in North Korea talked of the area being 'decimated'. Is this an example of a word that nowadays has officially changed its meaning so that older dictionaries are out of date? Other words that come to mind that now mean the opposite of what they used to mean are 'crafty' and 'awful'.

You've hit upon one of my (many) pet peeves regarding the English language and one I think has been discussed elsewhere. Type in "decimate" under the search function and you'll come up with several hits.

Another lost word I still mourn for is "dilemma" which, technically, is a problem for which there are two specific possible solutions. A "trilemma" had three possible solutions but, word-wise, never really made the splash that "dilemma" did. Nowadays, a dilemma is simply a problem and I think the language is the poorer for it even if it is only to the slightest degree.


Welcome aboard, by the way! Or, seeing as how you post from London, maybe I should say "Welcome abroad"?

CJ is right. The verb "to decimate" seems now to be used as a simile for "to devastate". The shift in meaning is, I fear, now to widely accepted for the verb to revert to its original, and nicely precise, definition.

As CJ says, we've discussed this a couple of times before. The most recent thread is at https://wordcraft.infopop.cc/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=441607094&f=932607094&m=4896029121&r=6056051061#6056051061

Really, here in the states people use decimate to mean "kill" or "destroy," having nothing to do with 90% or 10%.

Another word that has changed (and which annoys poor arnie to death) is "moot point." A moot point can mean (though not to arnie) one that no longer makes any difference.

I wrote a letter to a travel paper once in response to their assertion that the recession could "decimate 40% of the travel market". As I pointed out, that means a loss of just 4% of the total market - or a loss of 80 travel agencies out of the 1,987 surveyed.Sad but not terminal for the industry.

The title they affixed to my letter was, "Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus interpres"* - which revealed an unexpected classical scholarship on the part of the sub-editor!

They did go on to point out that their dictionary of choice, Collins,gives as its first definition "to destroy or kill a large proportion off".

The OED, too, gives this definition but adds the note disp. and the rider, "sense 1 is now the usual sense of decimate, although it is often deplored as inappropriate use".

I go along with Oxford.

*As a true translator, you will take care not to translate word for word

of course you are all quite right about the definition shift of decimate; but to my mind there isn't much use for the traditional meaning of the word, unless you happen to be writing a historical epic.

on the other hand, the modern use provides a nice distinction; e.g., we can devastate the countryside and decimate a population.

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always remember, shift happens!

I agree, tsuwm, and I have always wondered how I would be able to use that word if it only meant to reduce by 90%. What if you don't know? Or, what if it is 88%? BTW, we haven't seen you in awhile, tsuwm. Welcome back!

I may be wrong on this....but....I think the Brits have a harder time accepting these shifts ()than those of us in the U.S.

Kalleh says, "I think the Brits have a harder time accepting these shifts than those of us in the U.S."

Well, I don't know. I found a US author, who, writing about "Words and Their Uses -- Misused Words," made exactly the same point about misuse of decimate. He makes his point most excellently, here.

Of course, he was writing in 1868, so you might conceivably think that position is a bit behind the times today. He also thought that it was a "perversion" to use the noun "dress" to mean "gown".

I bring this thread back for two reasons:
1) friday's wwftd was: vigesimation

the act of putting to death every twentieth man
(cf. vigesimal and decimation)

For those who pine for the original meaning of
decimation, this obsolete word's for you.

b) a hapless subscriber wrote: "In your meticulous research did you discover why
every twentieth man might be put to death? And where was this taking place? Sounds more like something someone just made up!"

I couldn't help myself; I replied:
The word vigesimation was coined by J. Caesar in reaction to complaints from his cohorts regarding recurring decimation. However, he never put it into practice, believing it to be entirely too lenient and therefore counterproductive.

(actually, the only citation that OED2 has for it is Bailey's olde dictionary (1727))

There are some words that there is just never an occasion to use, and I think this qualifies as one of them!