Evidence for DECIMATE ('one in ten')

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:00 PM -0500 1/9/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 1/9/2008 02:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>More fun: In its own usage note, the _New Oxford American
>>Dictionary_ says that "It is generally agreed that _decimate_ should
>>not be used to mean 'defeat utterly.'"
>>
>>   So evidently a bunch of super-quasi-illiterates  (students and
>>the sportswriters they have become, I assume) have been doing just
>>that. Citations anyone?
>
>Have we actually seen recently any examples that mean "defeat
>utterly" in the sense of "no one left"?  I wouldn't use it that way
>myself, reserving "decimate" even in the "loose and rhetorical" sense
>for "devastate, but leave some surviving".
>
>Joel

In athletic contexts, it's more often "decimated by injuries" (38,300
google hits; the implication is that the decimatees were still able
to field a team, short-handed though they were), which involves the
usual metaphorical understanding, rather than, say, "the Knicks were
decimated by the Celtics", meaning 'defeated utterly' or
'(metaphorically) slaughtered'.

And in non-athletic endeavors, it would be unusual (if perhaps not
unprecedented) to describe, say, the aborigines of Tasmania as having
been decimated (i.e. completely wiped out).  Let's see...

===========
The natives of Australia and Tasmania were decimated following
contact with Europeans. The 300,000 natives whom whites encountered
in Australia in the 18th century, would dwindle to a pathetic 3,000
by 1930.  Today these peoples account for less than 2%  of the
Australian population and remain oppressed.
===========

Far more than decimated in the strict sense, but still not completely
eliminated.

===========
The indigenous population [of Tasmania], which had been on the island
some 35,000 years, numbered about 5,000 at the time of colonization;
they were subsequently decimated, with only a few mixed-race
survivors.
===========

Well, OK, but still more than none, assuming the mixed-race survivors count.

LH

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