Are "decimate" and "decimation" having a moment? Or is it just me?
I see the word everywhere lately. It is used to characterise election victories, sports scores, rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities, book reviews, anything. Today I saw it applied to an analysis of a judicial decision, described as a "very brutal decimation of the opinion."
What I really notice is that every use of the word I see defies its literal motionmeaning. You Latin scholars know that decimate means to select one-tenth, based on the possibly legendary policy of Roman generals who would punish mutiny in the ranks by executing every tenth man, chosen by random selection. Decim as in decimal, by tenths. Sometimes also used for a ten-percent tax or levy.
Today it seems decimate is always used as a synonym for annihilate, that is, totally destroy. (Nihil, nothing.)
I admit I'm all for evolutionary grammar. Words come to mean what we agree they shall mean (I heard a radio host today describe a serious documentary film as "incredible," -- meaning very good, of course.) So okay, let's accept it, decimate is now just another synonym for destroy.
I'm just intrigued to see the process in action -- and maybe nostalgic for when usage nerds still had some influence.
Update, April 13: Russ Chamberlayne reminds us to go back to Fowler in all these cases.
The decimation of the earlier meaning of decimate is older than we might think. My entirely yellowed copy of The Royal Standard English Dictionary, printed in Boston sometime in the second decade of the 19th century, pegs decimate and decimation to the idea of "taking the tenth."
H.W. Fowler, one of the 20th century's leading usage geeks, wrote his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage in the years after the First World War. In it he points out the earlier "every tenth man" connotation of decimate, but also that "its application is naturally extended to the destruction in any way of a large proportion of anything reckoned by number, e.g. a population is decimated by the plague."
"But," he goes on, "naturally also anything that is directly inconsistent with the proper sense ('A single frosty night decimated the currants by as much as 80%') must be avoided."
A century later, anything goes with decimate, whether it's reckoned by number or not. Same goes for less, as "fewer" (as the proper alternative to "less" when describing things countable) also approaches decimation.
Update: Decimation Watch ("naturally also anything that is directly inconsistent with the proper sense must be avoided.")
"In the 1994 election, Spitzer spent $43 million -- and was decimated. In a four-way race, he finished last." -- Andrew Meier, Morgenthau, p739 (2022)
