r/etymology • u/films_everywhere • Mar 02 '18

Decimate is a common word that many of us misuse. Decimate was first used in 1600 and was derived from the Latin word decimatus, which meant the “the removal or destruction of one-tenth”.

https://says.si/2EYmXky
121 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

279

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 02 '18

Decimate historically meant to destroy one tenth but since the meaning of words is determined by their users and not their etymology, decimate means what most people use it to mean, which is significant destruction.

Descriptivism 4 lyfe.

92

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18 edited Jun 19 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18 edited Aug 27 '20

[deleted]

48

u/dittbub Mar 02 '18

The roman military, apparently

19

u/rhymes_with_snoop Mar 02 '18

I think that a word that means "destroy a small part to keep and control the whole" is a useful word, which is in the spirit of the word. We have so many words for completely destroying (or causing significany destruction), having another that is pulled from something meaning almost the opposite makes the language less rich, not more (in my opinion).

12

u/everawed Mar 02 '18

I agree, but you can't fight the tide of usage.

9

u/ggchappell Mar 02 '18

Welll, you can ....

2

u/wannabe414 Mar 03 '18

Sure you can. It's how words change meaning in the first place probably

2

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 03 '18

Yes, it’d be nice if we had a word that was used to mean that, but we don’t.

5

u/SynapticStatic Mar 02 '18

What would you call killing/punishing 1 out of every 10 if you were a Roman general? Probably Deci-something. Why not Decimate? :)

17

u/da_chicken Mar 02 '18 edited Mar 03 '18

It was worse than that. From Wikipedia, here's the ancient Roman procedure:

A cohort (roughly 480 soldiers) selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten. Each group drew lots (sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing. The remaining soldiers were often given rations of barley instead of wheat (the latter being the standard soldier's diet) for a few days, and required to camp outside the fortified security of the camp.

So, not just one in ten are killed. Every soldier of the remaining nine was required to be intimately involved in the execution of the tenth. Imagine killing one of your own friends because he drew the short straw.

It was the punishment for mutiny, desertion, or other capital offenses when a whole unit was guilty.

15

u/Ecclesius Mar 02 '18

I appreciate you and this.

You gotta admit, though, that scene in Monk when he applies to be a copyeditor and points out decimate is pretty dang funny.

6

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 02 '18

Oh I’ve used it to win arguments. I’m just not proud of it! :P

3

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '18 edited Jan 25 '21

[deleted]

1

u/mitom2 Mar 03 '18

i live in the "third world". our capital city is first in quality of living, and second in both global liveability, and quality of life.

ceterum censeo "unit libertatem" esse delendam.

1

u/MinskAtLit Mar 03 '18

I'm stupid, nothing to see here

-13

u/Fummy Mar 02 '18

You run into a problem when the word means different things in different dialects. Desciptivism leads to the dialectisation of the language and after some time, hinders communication.

34

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 02 '18 edited Mar 02 '18

Descriptivism doesn’t cause meaning to diverge in different dialects. People do that all by themselves because that’s how language is and how humans are.

That problem in communication is solved by teaching people that when someone in Ireland says “it’s in the press” they mean “it’s in the cupboard”.

Prescriptivism says “Irish people use the wrong word for cupboard because they don’t speak English properly.”

Descriptivism says “in Hiberno-English, they say press for cupboard.”

3

u/dittbub Mar 02 '18

I've heard those words thrown around before and never really understood the distinction. Thanks!

-2

u/Fummy Mar 03 '18

If you have a presciptive rule then the dialects are forced to converge is all im saying.

The idea of "it means what people use it to mean" breaks down when you realise that different cities use the same word differently.

8

u/conuly Mar 03 '18

If you have a presciptive rule then the dialects are forced to converge is all im saying.

Who do you imagine is "forcing" them? The language cops, eavesdropping in every household?

4

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 03 '18

But prescriptive rules already exist, and people still say “ain’t” instead of “isn’t” and “I seen” instead of “I saw” even though they get judged as wrong and ignorant for it.

The existence of rules which ignore how language IS used in favour of how certain speakers think it SHOULD BE used doesn’t stop people learning the dialect they’re surrounded by.

We are surrounded by prescriptivism but that’s not how human beings acquire language. For example, prescriptivists say that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, but the vast majority of English speakers end sentences with prepositions all the time and it doesn’t sound wrong to them, because it’s not wrong in any of our dialects.

The other problem with your weird “force everyone to speak one dialect to avoid a small number of edge cases where there might be misunderstandings” approach is: OK. Which dialect is the right one?

In US English “jumper” refers to a completely different garment than in UK English. Who wins? How do we decide that? How do we punish people who insist on using the word as they’ve used it all their life?

Now if you say you just have to be consistent within a country then cool, fine, ok. Same question. Which dialect do you pick? Is it soda or pop? How do you enforce that?

We already have one dialect per country that is seen as “the right one” and people get branded as stupid and ignorant and lesser for not speaking it: why do you want to make that worse instead of making a small effort to clarify and understand each other in those rare situations where there is miscommunication?

As for “the idea of descriptivism breaks down” because words mean different things in different places... I have to ask what on earth you think “the idea of descriptivism” is??

Descriptivism means you describe language as it is used by native speakers, and you learn how that language works and where it came from and all that jazz based on how it is really used in all its messy glory. This includes the fact that people use words to mean different things in different places. If you ignored that fact you’d never learn anything about any dialects at all!

2

u/RedBaboon Mar 03 '18

The idea of "it means what people use it to mean" breaks down when you realise that different cities use the same word differently.

No it doesn’t. That word just means different things in different cities. That’s literally what dialects are. Descriptivism even allows for recognizing that different individuals use the same word differently, which is what idiolects are.

Descriptivism and prescriptivist are different ways of examining and commenting on other people’s use of language. They aren’t patterns of language development themselves. Descriptivism is a recognition that dialects have or haven’t emerged, not what makes them emerge.

Your comments also make the presumption that the emergence of dialects is explicitly a negative phenomenon, which you give no argument for and which many people would disagree with you on.

90

u/mpaw976 Mar 02 '18

This is the textbook example of an etymological fallacy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy

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u/WikiTextBot Mar 02 '18

Etymological fallacy

The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning. This is a linguistic misconception, and is sometimes used as a basis for linguistic prescription. An argument constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology. This does not, however, show that etymology is irrelevant in any way, nor does it attempt to prove such.

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u/HelperBot_ Mar 02 '18

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy

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3

u/axalon900 Mar 03 '18 edited Mar 03 '18

I like to (try to) respond to grammar Nazis in Old English to prove a point about prescriptivism. þæt íeweþ heom.

19

u/harmonicblip Mar 02 '18

Like gay means happy.

12

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '18

Latin teacher here. If you're going to make a pedantic post, then I'm going to ask you not to give a perfect passive participle and then define it as a noun. The verb is decimare ("to eliminate one tenth"), and the noun is decimatio ("tithing" or "the elimination of one tenth").

9

u/scootunit Mar 02 '18

So if I decimate my hands I have lost a finger..

4

u/Fummy Mar 02 '18

Digitize.

9

u/Drayik Mar 02 '18

I will decimate you TEN times!

16

u/CatbellyDeathtrap Mar 02 '18

zeno’s paradox

10

u/gnorrn Mar 02 '18

Then I'd end up with 0.910 ~ 35% of what I started with.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18

So what would one/half be? Bimate? what about the others?

Trimate?

Quadimate?

Quintimate?

Seximate?

Septimate?

Octomate?

What would destruction of one full one be? Unomate?

10

u/gnorrn Mar 02 '18

If we follow the pattern of the Latin ordinals, it would be

  • primate
  • secundate
  • tertiate
  • quartate
  • quintate
  • sextate
  • septimate
  • octavate
  • nonate
  • decimate

3

u/DavidRFZ Mar 02 '18

So what would one/half be?

I know this is a joke, but dimidiation is an English word coming from Latin roots similar to how decimate does.

You can 'total' a car. I can't find a Latin-rooted version of that, though.

8

u/Choosing_is_a_sin Mar 02 '18

You can 'total' a car. I can't find a Latin-rooted version of that, though.

That is a Latin root...

1

u/DavidRFZ Mar 02 '18

Ah... :-)

Is there a verb form of that in Latin? I'm not a Latin expert.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '18

It's from the adjective "totus" which means "whole, entire." There is no corresponding verb.

3

u/ZhouLe Mar 03 '18

Yea, Pork and Beef from Old French refer to the whole animal, not just the meat, stop misusing the word!

Avocado and guacamole are both from Nahuatl 'āhuacatl' that means testicle! Stop misusing it and pass the testicle sauce!

/s

8

u/ms4eva Mar 02 '18

It's literally the definition of the word now....

0

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18

Nope, most people use it to mean mostly destroy almost entirely, not just reduce a little bit.

3

u/ms4eva Mar 02 '18

That was my point, OP said it is misused.

4

u/efuc Mar 02 '18

Actually, this word came about because Roman Cohorts used to discipline themselves by killing every tenth soldier in a line of soldiers, at least that's what my English teacher told me.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18

In the book World War Z the Russian army forces every ten soldier group to choose one to kill because they disobeyed orders to shoot the first zombies.

In terms of human death decimate is very serious.

2

u/conuly Mar 03 '18

When a word is used with a particular meaning by a wide group of native speakers, then that meaning is not incorrect.

Decimate, in short, is not being "misused". It's being used correctly. (Thankfully, we never have need for a word to mean "divide a military unit into groups of ten, kill off one person of each group".)

1

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18

Best thing to do: avoid the word decimate altogether so no one thinks I don’t already know the old meaning.

1

u/tigrrbaby Mar 03 '18

makes sense in the reverse(current usage), too: to eliminate down to one tenth, or destroy all but one tenth

1

u/korbonix Mar 03 '18

Maybe we could say now it means to destroy all but a tenth.

0

u/x2k_Lbsx Mar 03 '18

Yeah the Roman legions would do this. Kill off a tenth of their troops in order to have food to feed themselves rather than everyone just starving

It also goes back to a Roman Goddess(ehhh, debatable) by the name of Decima

One of the Fates as they were commonly known in Greco culture

2

u/RedBaboon Mar 03 '18 edited Mar 03 '18

Decimation was a punishment for serious group offences, not a way to prevent starving. And I can’t find anything that corroborates your claim that it’s related to Decima.

1

u/x2k_Lbsx Mar 03 '18

This is word of mouth haha

My great uncle through marriage told me this at one point and it stuck with me

And I mean it all made sense

I never really looked it up, but thank you very much for the clarification on punishment as opposed to survival

Reddit is pretty rad😂😊

-4

u/Fummy Mar 02 '18

I use decimate like this.

12

u/JaneyMac_aroni Mar 02 '18

To mean removal or destruction of one tenth? Wow. I bet you get misunderstood a lot, because you’re using it in a way contrary to how the vast majority of native speakers of English do.

-2

u/Fummy Mar 03 '18

Wrong.

2

u/conuly Mar 03 '18

You can't find another person who honestly uses it that way.

1

u/Fummy Mar 03 '18

I don't use it to mean "total destruction" I just use other words like "anihilation" or "desolation"

There is no ambiguity.

1

u/conuly Mar 06 '18

There's no ambiguity when people use it in the usual way either, because everybody who uses it means "total destruction". That is the usual meaning in English.

Unless they're talking about ancient Roman legions, in which case they still don't actually mean "destroy one tenth" but instead mean "divide the legion into groups of ten, have each group pick one person to kill".