Now, look. I'm not (much of) a pedant but I do like a degree of linguistic correctness or at the very least, control. I have no desire to see our language stagnate but I do wish you to have the tools of your trade and be able to use them correctly.
Therefore, here begins a series of mini-posts, each aiming to set you straight on the correct use of a word which is often used wrongly. It also gives me a chance to ride a few hobby horses into the sunset and to invite you to join The Crabbit Sticklers Club.
First up is decimate. I am going to begin a little campaign to raise awareness of the inadvertently ludicrous misuse of this word.
Decimate does not mean "reduce to a tenth of its former self". It means, "reduce BY a tenth." Originally, it meant to kill one man in every ten of a mutinous army. Charming.
Therefore, if you say, "OMG, I have completely decimated that bar of chocolate," my response would be, "Gosh, how very abstemious. Why didn't you have more?" And you'd look at me strangely.
So, next time you want to say that something was almost destroyed or at least terribly badly affected, you do yourself no favours by using decimated. If you see me a few other sticklers suppressing a knowing smile, I apologise. A bit. But you may now join the Crabbit Sticklers Club.
On the other hand, I'm no tyrant: if you want to carry on using decimate wrongly, you may. But I think you'll find you no longer want to.
Brainwashed. Bwahahahaha.
28 comments:
Miaou! Would you care to come and teach word-power skills to the journalists of our state newspaper? They use "decimate" and "goaled" and "powered through" and some other unlikely words.
Words change their meanings through time, don't they? Webster's dictionary has two meanings - the first exactly as you say - and the other meaning - to wreak havoc.
All synonyms are to do with the wreaking havoc bit, rather than the other.
I will find another word from now on, just in case a reader has a classical education and assumes I mean less havoc than I actually do.
Fascinating stuff though, reading up, I had no idea the process of decimation was still carried out both in WWI and WWII. Frightening stuff. Thanks for the thoughts!
Vanessa - I agree and I do use modern usages too. I also love neologisms and creative use of words. But, knowing the literal meaning of the word, I find it really difficult not to laugh when people choose it to mean so much more than it does. Even the wreaking havoc meaning is tempered by the old-fashioned tendency to avoid hyperbole, I feel.
Great post, Nicola, but this could trigger a pedants' revolt as you're swamped with linguistic moans! (And btw, I do mean pedants in the plural there, it's not a rogue apostrophe...)
A friend told me not long ago that I was 'pragmatic', so I was quite pleased - but puzzled as she was obviously slightly cross with me. After a while I realised she was moaning that I was 'dogmatic' (as indeed I am. Frequently; I suppose this isn't the soap box to start on about Haitch? as we're dealing with the written, not spoken, word.)
You need to watch the Russell T. Davies scripted "Doctor Who" episode "The Sound of Drums", in which the Doctor's arch enemy The Master (played by John Simm) orders the Earth's population to be decimated by the Toclafane - and he is very insistent on the grammatically correct use. The Toclafane kill one-tenth of the population. (It's all okay, though, because the Doctor turns back time in the end with a Big Reset Button.)
The perils of a classical education...
Vanessa is, of course, right about transferred meaning. Which is what I tell myself every time I start to get wound up by my own pet peeve which is, of course, barbarian.
PS, that's me, Dan H - for some reason your blog is no longer letting me use the name/URL thingy!
*Please* do 'enormity' next! :-)
please please please do "broke the mold".
ooh, now they're coming thick and fast. One they always get wrong on reality shows is using "dealbreaker" and "showstopper" as though they're synonymous as opposed to be pretty much antonyms
Being old school, Ok, very old school, I learnt Latin and Greek. I failed miserably in both at 'O' level but my scant knowledge has held me in good stead since. I love your pedantry. Hooray for the one in ten who are.
Please do the difference between disinterested and uninterested. I could launch into a long list of others, but my blood pressure isn't up to it.
I'd admit to pedantry as well, because I already new this about our friend decimate.
Another one is meteoric rise, when everyone knows meteors fall to earth, not rise from it.
Don't get me started on the overuse of literally. It's literally making me scream. Ooops, I got myself started anyway. Ayeyeyeyeyeyeyey!
Thanks for all your ideas! Ooh, we are a load of old pedants, aren't we? Someone will soon be along to accuse us of being patriarchal, despotic and all sorts of nasty things.
It also shows how each of us is (not "are"...) annoyed by different things. helen, I had planned to do disinterested/interested next but then i looked in my shorter Oxford and discovered that what I consider the WRONG use of disinterested was actually given as the first meaning. ARghhh.
btw, I LOVE hearing wrong uses of literally! I literally crack up laughing at them sometimes.
DanielB - lovely!
ebony - meteoric rise is another good one.
AlexG - omg I've never thought about enormity!
Dan H - indeed. (re perils)
I also need to admit that although I'm a pedant, I don't get everything right by any means, and there will be some wrong uses I completely miss. Apologies.
I do plan to do hopefully soon, though. Hopefully...
Guilty as charged - I am a pedant. The result of a pedantic English teacher, but I will not apologise - she taught me the structure of a language I love.
My pet hate (at the moment!) - 'sat' for sitting, as in 'I was sat by the fire . . .'
My pet hate, which is sadly everywhere now so I fear it is here to stay, is 'of' instead of 'have'.
As on: 'Could of, would of, should of'. I hate this very much!
"Could of" and "would of" are a different category, though, aren't they? These are just sheer idiocy and ignorance, whereas the abuse of "decimate", "enormity", "fulsome", etc. is more subtle.
Hm... it's tricky, isn't it? Because of course, language does change, whether we like it or not. My large dictionary has your original meaning, but goes on to say 'This has been more or less totally superseded by the sense 'kill or destroy a large proportion of', although some traditionalists argue that this later sense is incorrect.'
We all have our pet niggles about the way the use of language changes, but we are none of us the equivalent of the Academie Francaise, are we? So I'm not sure we have the right to hand down edicts from a position of loftiness, much as some usages might annoy us...
My dictionary (Collins) also has both meanings - to destroy or kill a large proportion of and to kill every tenth man - although it specifes that the second meaning is especially in the ancient Roman army.
There is so much misuse of language, I couldn't possibly list everything I dislike here!
I would have voted for 'hopefully' next. And 'none are'; 'less' when 'fewer' is needed; 'quantum leap' - quanta are small!
Language is always changing. My daughters love to point out that "ain't" is now in the dictionary. *sigh*
And the plural of "you" is "you" not "yous" or "yous two"!
Ooh, "each of us is". If you're going down *that* route...
One of my jobs as a university administrator is to draft letters for bigwigs who should know basic grammar. I once drafted a letter with a perfectly simple statement that "A number of colleges has decided to..." which came back "proofed" to "A number of colleges have..." - whaddaya do, eh?
The other one of the ilk (ooh, there's another one - people who say "the same ilk") is "none" - "none" is singular as is no one.
Of course, the problem with being a pedant is you better make damn sure you don't slip on your own banana skins!
Where do people stand on myriad by the way? It bothered me more than is right when I read somewhere that it was equally correct to say "a myriad *of* things" as well as "a myriad things" (though I guess it could be apartitive genitive). Hmm, sometimes it feels like there really are too few minutes in the day with so much to worry about...
FRABULOUS! a colleague once told me I looked ravenous and I wasn't sure what look to give back.. was he chatting me up or telling me I needed to eat more?
I'm with Sarah on the 'would of/have'. I'm still in the dark about the correct use/spelling of the word 'faint'. I always thought this was a swoon and 'feint' was a lighter shade of something (hence schoolbooks being 'feint ruled')but I'm still no wiser.
Nice article, thanks for the information.
That is one of my pet hates but it's symptomatic of the lack of education in how English evolved. In Australia we have television segment where viewers ask the meaning and origin of words. This week's was 'wrought' as in wrought iron. It had never occurred to me that anyone didn't know it came from to work. Shows my age, I guess - and that I grew up listening to Victorian hymns where wrought is not that uncommon.
I can't stand all this pedanticness. Surely if you destroyed 1/10th of an army that would be a serious amount of people lost and would effect the outcome of the fighting. Therefore decimate tends to suggest it would wreak havoc. This post would of wound up my husband ;-) so I'm pretty sure most of you would have struggled to get past the first sentence.
From an English teacher who has lost the ability to spell let alone remember the correct use of words - having seen so many versions.
The thing is... the word "decimate" is now used by most people to mean "virtually destroyed", and therefore if you use this word, regardless of whether you are using it correctly or not, it will most likely be interpreted incorrectly.
In which case... is there not a case for saying the meaning of this word has now changed, and is part of the wonderful and continuing evolution of the English language?
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