DECIMATE (one more time)

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Neither one. These are both good questions, and the answers (as I see it) are 
as follows:

DECIMATE, for some people, means 'killing [or destroying] one in ten'--and 
that meaning has been around for several generations. (For some other people, 
DECIMATE apparently means 'killing all but one in ten'--not sure how long that 
one has been around). For still others, DECIMATE has a normal meaning of 
something like 'destroy' or severely damage', and that meaning, too, has been around 
for generations (some people, such as Arnold Zwicky, apparently distinguish 
this family of meanings further, with some of the submeanings being, 
apparently, more acceptable than others). It has also meen noted (by others on this 
list) that there is a fairly recent use of DECIMATE in certain current technical 
jargon.

The thread that has been going on here under this subject line has to do with 
the fact that the proponents of the 'killing one in ten' take the 
prescriptivist position that all other meanings are "wrong," whereas linguists maintain 
that any usage that has been viable for a considerable number of people for 
hundreds of years cannot be "wrong." Arnold Zwicky and Larry Horn have argued 
that the presecriptivist position is essentially etymological (and ludicrous). I 
certainly don't believe that any of the meanings is "wrong," but I have argued 
that the prescriptivist reading is not merely a matter of the historical 
perpetuation of linguistic prejudice, but that it is also in line with the way 
normal people analyze words--particularly unusual words such as DECIMATE. I offer 
this as a partial--but I believe important--reason why people have continued 
to perpetuate the prescriptivist dogma. 

In short, the thread has (as I see it) been largely about the somewhat 
theoretical question of how prescriptivist dogma is created and perpetuated. (I've 
also offered some suggestion that linguists seem sometimes to duplicate the 
arrogance and hauteur of the prescriptivists in dismissing popular notions about 
right and wrong as laughably unscientific and ignorant, but that has elicited 
little response.) There has also been some implication that the prescriptivist 
position is harmful, in that it has made the perfectly good word DECIMATE 
hard to use in the simple sense "destroy"--to do so opens one up to the charge of 
"misuse." (But cf. the arguments of linguistic harm eminating from 
prescriptivists with respect to such meaning changes as that undergone bhy GAY in the 
past 40 years.)

It occurs to me that, regardless of the presence of a morpheme meaning 'ten' 
in DECIMATE, the prescriptivists can be countered--in their own terms, more or 
less--by noting that any word can legitimately be used metaphorically, and 
that since (as Larry and Arnold and others have pointed out) there is almost 
never any need for the use of a word to mean 'reduce in number by 10%', a 
metaphorical "extension" of the word makes good sense and will not be misunderstood. 
Nobody objects that the word "cupboard" means 'board for hanging cups' or I 
see it, what makes DECIMATE diffrent (other than the accident of sociolinguistic 
history) is that it is a learned-sounding term--and learned words are somehow 
supposed to be precise--and that DECIM- just jumps out at one as meaning 
'ten'--never mind that the word in its usual sense is rather useful!

 
In a message dated 1/7/08 11:54:03 AM, jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM writes:


> I'm getting confused by this discussion.  Is it the
> contention of this discussion that "decimate" does not
> and never has meant killing one in ten; that such a
> concept is totally foreign to the origin of this word
> and has been invented in recent times to match the
> word with a spurious etymology?
> 




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