In the December Vocabula Now Online: Them's Crying Words

[Jonathan Lighter]

I must be missing something. OED online has _decimate_ , to execute one in every ten (as in the Roman army) from 1600, with the verb _decimo_ as etymon.

  OTOH, I don't find the Latin verb in either Short's _Latin Dictionary for Schools_ (1916) or Traupman's excellent _Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary_ (except in the English-Latin section where it translates "decimate.")

  Can it be there *was* no Latin verb _decimo_?  Hard to believe, even for gullible me.

  JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: In the December Vocabula Now Online: Them's Crying Words
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On Dec 16, 2007, at 7:24 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> At 7:38 AM -0500 12/16/07, The Vocabula Review wrote:
>>
>> decimate, to v. For the information of journalists and for all
>> radio and TV presenters: to "decimate" a group of people or things
>> does not mean to kill, destroy, ravage, defeat, or lay waste all or
>> most of that group...

and goes on to point out absurdities in Peter Bowler's discussion.

MWDEU has a wonderful sharp-tongued discussion of the word, noting
that (a) the proscribed sense is attested since (at least) 1663; (b)
people have been complaining about this usage since (at least) Richard
Grant White in 1870; and (c) there are apparently *no* attested uses
of the verb in the meaning 'reduce by one-tenth' (which is not
surprising, because there just aren't that many occasions on which
you'd actually want such a verb).

what interests me about the whole matter is the widespread passion
with which the usage is condemned. it's an enduring peeve fashion
(with a longer history even than speaker-oriented "hopefully").

arnold

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