OT Evidence for DECIMATE ( 'one in ten')

[Benjamin Barrett]

Joel S. Berson wrote:
> At 1/8/2008 11:52 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
>> 1884: <<when last they were quartered here they were twice-decimated
>> by cholera, and left a fifth of their regiment in the cemetery here.>>
>>
>
> Just a slight quarrel here -- the writer of this needs a re-education
> in arithmetic.  Successive decimations leave 19 % in the cemetery.
>
> Joel
>
19% sounds like a fifth to me. I don't think the figures are that
accurate to begin with, and this is prose, anyway, not a math paper. BB

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org