[Ads-l] to decimate: a "recent" bugaboo

[Dan Goncharoff]

Trying to understand the "false" or "parlor" etymology. Did the word NOT
come from the Latin for "to reduce by a tenth"??

DanG

On Wed, May 13, 2026, 11:48 AM Jonathan Lighter <
00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> Now that you mention it, I was also warned against "dilapidated" in the
> seventh grade. Thanks for reminding me.
>
> BTW, Fowler (1922) accepts the usual sense as long as it applies to
> something that can be "reckoned by number": "The population was decimated
> by plague."
>
> But he frowns on its application to other things.
>
> The truly radical anti-"decimate" taboo seems to insist that it can "only"
> mean "reduce by ten per cent (or so)."
>
> Except in writings about the Roman army, this sense is virtually never used
> by anybody.
>
> I believe the Roman practice it describes was uncommon in the first place,
> and Roman writers rarely mention it.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 11:36 AM Gordon, Matthew <gordonmj at missouri.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Richard Bailey mentions the case of ‘decimate’ among other examples of
> > “parlor etymology” in his book on 19th century English though he gives no
> > examples of complaints about it. He also mentions ‘dilapidated’ (which,
> > parlor etymologists argue, should be applied only to stone structures),
> and
> > he provides an extended account of a courtroom cross-examination in which
> > the witness, a doctor, is humiliated when the lawyer points out the
> > absurdity of his having diagnosed a male patient with hysteria (b/c of
> its
> > Greek root meaning “womb”).
> >
> > I wonder if the survival of the etymological fallacy with regard to
> > ‘decimate’ is due to the enduring obsession (among some people) with the
> > Roman empire.
> >
> > Matt
> >
> >
> > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> > Jonathan Lighter <00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 9:23 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Subject: to decimate: a "recent" bugaboo
> >
> > WARNING: This message has originated from an External Source. This may be
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> >
> > One of the favorite words of the President of the United States is
> > "decimate," meaning, as MW has it, "to reduce drastically especially in
> > number" and "to cause great destruction or harm to."  He uses it
> > emphatically each time he mentions Iranian losses of materiel or
> capacity.
> >
> > Just this morning a distinguished MSNOW commentator observed somewhat
> > condescendingly that, of course, the President is misusing the word,
> > because what it "really means" is to reduce by only  one tenth. (I was
> > taught this very emphatically in the seventh grade, btw.)
> >
> > Not news to members of this list. However, I was curious as to when it
> > became fashionable not just to criticize but to smirk with superiority at
> > this usage of "decimate," which OED documents "in standard English" from
> at
> > least 1660.
> >
> > Surely this was a public gripe of eighteenth-century grammarians and
> > Latinists.
> >
> > But apparently not. I may be missing something, but searches for
> > "decimate" + "Latin" + "one tenth" in Newspapers.com, InternetArchive,
> and
> > Google Books reveals no objection earlier than the 1880s.
> >
> > A writer in the British _Cornhill Magazine_(1885, p. 628, Google Books)
> > felt it necessary to observe, under the critical rubric of "Superfine
> > English" that "even when one uses 'decimate' metaphorically, in the
> > rough sense of to punish severely, or to destroy a very large proportion,
> > there is surely nothing wrong or very out-of-the-way in its usage."  He
> is
> > reacting to the strong objection of  an unnamed contemporary, whom he
> > scores as "one of the most phenomenally bad writers of the present
> > generation."
> >
> > Yet by 1905, London U. expected matriculants to eschew the wider usage:
> >
> > 1905 _Matriculation Directory_ (London Univ.) XXXIX 83 [GB]:
> Matriculation
> > Examination, 1905... _Decimate_. "The field of turnips was decimated:
> > scarce a root was left untouched." To _decimate_ properly means to reduce
> > _by_ one-tenth, and not to reduce _to_ one-tenth.
> >
> > (Other words "misused" included "future," "antiquarian," and "mutual.")
> >
> > It would be good to know the identity of "one of the most phenomenally
> bad
> > writers" of the mid-to-later nineteenth century" so as to enjoy some of
> his
> > wretched prose, but I haven't tried to track him down.
> >
> > It's curious, at any rate, that the super-prescriptivist objection to
> > "decimate" remains in educated circles long after others, like the split
> > infinitive, have been consigned to the dust.
> >
> > JL
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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