decimate

[Paul Frank]

Google Books:

"To decimate does not mean particularly to annihilate a body of people."
Edwin Radford, Unusual words and how they came about (New York, 1946), p. 61.

In other words, in 1946 "decimate" already meant to annihilate a body
of people, otherwise the good Mr Radford wouldn't have made a point of
telling his readers that it didn't.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
German, French, Italian > English
Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch



On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: decimate
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Now it's moved all the way to "annihilate; wipe out":
>
> 2008 Herman J. Viola _Warriors in Uniform_ (Washington, D.C.: National
> Geographic) 52: The decimation at the Little Big Horn could have been
> averted had Custer heeded the advice of his Crow scouts.
>
> JL

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