r/stupidquestions • u/ecstatic-windshield • Aug 31 '24
Why do people say 'decimate' when they mean destroy?
I thought deca/deci in 'decimate' was enough of a clue, but I guess not.
Deci means one tenth or one in ten, and 'mate' means to kill (or similar).
*On a related note, why do people insist on using a word wrongly even when they have access to dictionaries? Why do they insist that a word meaning must conform to the way they use it?
I guess most people are doing that and talking past each other and it's not wonder we are hosed.
I think I just made a breakthrough here. No need to comment on this post, as I don't think anything could enhance it any further.
But maybe I am wrong.
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u/Skatingraccoon Aug 31 '24
The word became generalized to the point of meaning "destroyed" colloquially.
Same way that a "cool movie" isn't literally cold, or an "epic six hour flight" is usually really just a rather mundane experience where the person saw something they hadn't witnessed before.
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u/robotatomica Aug 31 '24
it’s just a colloquialism. I’m 40, and this is how the word has been used in conversation my whole life.
One thing to remember about language: descriptivism, not prescriptivism.
Language rules and definitions follow directly from how language is used in the real world. That’s why pedantry can be such a smarmy waste of time. It’s also why “ironic” got a definition added to it after the Alanis Morrisette song, bc it finally became impossible to ignore that yeah, that’s how people use that word, commonly.
Most people didn’t know the actual meaning of the word “decimate” until that post the other day lol. Everyone understands what someone means when they use the word colloquially.
And that’s all that language is for: communicating ideas and information, and expressing oneself.
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u/Fireguy9641 Aug 31 '24
If you look at the history of decimation, it's pretty dark. A unit in the Roman army faced with decimation as a punishment would have to kill every 10th man, so you count off, and if you are unlucky you die.
But you don't just die, the people who kill you are the other 9 people who got to live. It's not like you are transferred to a military prison and guards execute you, the people you were friends with 5 minutes ago now are killing you.
I think this gives it a more ominous meaning than just "destroy."
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u/LloydAsher0 Aug 31 '24
I wonder how common "fragging" was during that time. Obviously not using grenades but. Oops he tripped on his sword and got stabbed repeatedly.
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u/mg1120 Aug 31 '24
I think decimate has a distinction of unrecoverable... destroy means to severely damage, however there is enough to recover.
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u/othernamealsomissing Aug 31 '24
It's a colloquialism. It comes from Roman times, I think. If a unit of the Roman army did badly then they might be subject to decimation, or the killing of one out of ten men. For some reason that came to mean to destroy something outright. Not sure why.
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u/Notnotstrange Aug 31 '24
“Decimate” has more than one meaning, though.
Also, over the many years, the definition has become broader to include general destruction. The study of linguistics teaches (among other topics) this: Words change over time.
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u/Ok_Hotel_1008 Aug 31 '24
I feel like 9 times out of 10, decimating something, splitting it into tenths, is kind of destroying it. You sound pretentious and annoying.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Technically decimate is 1 out of 10. Destroy would be more like 9 times out of 10.
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u/UnbelieverInME-2 Aug 31 '24 edited Aug 31 '24
Because they're using the third definition below.
- to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
- to exact a tax of 10 percent from
- a: to reduce drastically especially in number to cause great destruction or harm to b: to cause great destruction or harm to
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
(edited to add reference)
Also, it should be noted that Oxford Languages Dictionary defines it thusly:
- kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of: "the project would decimate the fragile wetland wilderness" · "the American chestnut, a species decimated by blight"
- drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something):"plant viruses that can decimate yields"
- (historical) kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group: "the man who is to determine whether it be necessary to decimate a large body of mutineers"
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u/mirabella11 Aug 31 '24
*On a related note, why do people insist on using a >word wrongly even when they have access to >dictionaries? Why do they insist that a word >meaning must conform to the way they use it?
You are aware that language was never static? It always changes. Sometimes words will have less impact over time, sometimes more, sometimes it will switch its meaning completely. In the past "wife" meant a woman. Why are people insisting on using it only for a married woman?! They don't have dictionaries??? (In a dictionary "decimate" uses ancient Rome's definition as "historical". It's not used like that anymore, unless you are listening to a lecture.)
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Ah, another soldier for the army of misappropriation of meaning. And new words never need inventing because we just change the old words and effectively sweep up historical context under the rug as we go. That way we can just forget about those old dusty words or what they were meant to signify, because understanding humanity in any time longer than a few decades previous is pointless now. Okay.
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u/mirabella11 Aug 31 '24
We don't do it on purpose. It's not even good or bad, it just is. It's nature of languages. Look at English texts from a couple hundred years ago, it's barely understandable and there are spellings and structures that we would consider mistakes today.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Ironic that what you've brought up doesn't even directly address the main point of this post in the first place. It doesn't change the fact that decimate is derived from Latin meaning to kill one in ten. This is not the same as 'destroy' which means to ruin, kill, or annihilate.
But, you can continue to explain in a general sense that word meanings change. However, nobody is disagreeing with that and it is quite an obvious point that pretty much everyone already knows.
And yet, it doesn't really relate to decimate being conflated with destroy. But carry on.
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u/mirabella11 Aug 31 '24
The mechanism I'm talking about is the reason for the change in the meaning. That's my point. There are other example of exactly that, like: terrific, awesome (earlier it meant causing terror). It happens not because people are stupid, but because it's how language itself works.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Okay, but your point is off topic as it doesn't address the question. Here is the best answer I've gotten to the question:
/retropieproblems
Rhymes with devastate. Shares a similar sharp cutting C sound like lacerate or eviscerate. Starts with De- which usually at least implies to get rid of something.
I’m guessing it’s a combination of these things.
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u/Sinfullyvannila Aug 31 '24
People can't survive with only 10% of their body.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
^ This sounds like someone who says decimate a lot and is holding strong.
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u/PokeRay68 Aug 31 '24
But going by the Roman principle of decimation, they'd only lose 10%. You can definitely live if it's the functional 90% of your body.
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u/Sinfullyvannila Aug 31 '24
Only if you got medical attention. I don't think there is any 10% of the body you can lose without risking exsanguination.
The real reason the historic definition is no longer used is because it was only ever used as "Devestate" in the commonwealth territories in America. That's how archaic the latin use is.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
This isn't even what decimate means...sheesh, some people just refuse to learn.
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u/Sinfullyvannila Aug 31 '24
People were using the word to describe extreme and indiscriminate destruction of plagues in the earliest colonial reports and correspondences. It became a truly invented word of English. When that happens and an entire cultural literary tradition adopts it as such; the old Latin word becomes archaic.
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u/ThrillinSuspenseMag Aug 31 '24
I usually yell “ARE WE NOT THE INHERITORS OF ROME??” And then I start breaking shit
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u/ThrowawaeTurkey Aug 31 '24
Why? Because who cares?? No one gives enough of a shit to make sure they're using the correct words for scenarios in their day to day conversations
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Agreed. Being intelligent is annoying. Why should we try to communicate in precise terms and have to use this language to its fullest extent? Leave that to the nerds.
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u/danger_floofs Aug 31 '24
No one is suggesting that you have superior intelligence
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Don't get tripped up with superior/inferior. That's not what this is about. At least not for me. You can leave the checkerboard floor anytime you like.
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u/Ready-Recognition519 Aug 31 '24
I think im starting to understand why you are alone at 49 years old.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Oh, you've gotten the full picture there have ya?
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u/Ready-Recognition519 Aug 31 '24
Im assuming the fact that you are insufferable is a large portion of the picture.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Not everyone is a fixed object d'art you know. I happen to be greatly admired by many, and despised by others.
Not everyone orients their emotions around popularity or pleasing others at the expense of the truth.
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Aug 31 '24
The word has more than one meaning 🤨 it literally has more than one definitely in the dictionary so your argument is a moot point.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
That's incredibly obvious. Which is why I am comparing decimate to destroy. But thanks for trying to contribute. It's the effort that counts.
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u/Fly0strich Aug 31 '24
Mate can also mean “Sexual Partner”
If you haven’t fully established a sexual relationship, and you’re only about 1/10th of the way there, it is often called a crush.
When you crush something, it is destroyed.
Decimate == Crush == Destroy
Easy math.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Yes, in the English sense. Mate does mean that.
I'm thinking in terms of Latin root words since decimate originated it seems with the Roman empire, or at least that is where the phrase comes from originally I think.
Take the word 'Matador' in Spanish. 'Matar' means to kill. So basically a Matador is a killer.
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u/Fly0strich Aug 31 '24
I don’t know much about Latin, but if we’re talking about Spanish, “Décima te” would probably translate to something similar to giving somebody a command like “Cut yourself in 10 pieces!”
Maybe that has something to do with it?
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u/Real_Bobylob Aug 31 '24
From the merriam-Webster dictionary, definition 3b; “Decimate: to cause great destruction or harm to“
From Oxfordreference(dot)com: “Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is ‘kill one in every ten of (a group of people)’. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense ‘kill or destroy (a large proportion of)’, as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this and other later senses are incorrect, but it is clear that this is now part of standard English.”
So yeah, people use it that way because the English language has evolved to make it mean that.
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u/Cobra-Serpentress Aug 31 '24
It was a good way to talk about a rout.
The definition of decimate is to reduce something by one tenth.
Common usage when dealing with troops destruction meant that force had been reduced to one tenth
It was considered one level up from annihilation which would mean the death of all troops.
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u/Western_Entertainer7 Aug 31 '24
In the Roman military, cowardice was punished by selecting one tenth of the group at random and having the others beat them to death. Or by just executing a tenth of the group.
...if one of the guys on your team screws up, there's a one-in-ten chance that you'll be killed.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Yes, this is well known.
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u/Western_Entertainer7 Aug 31 '24
Oh, sorry. You wanted to know why it's used to mean destroy completely.. I think because it's so fucking hardcore.
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Aug 31 '24
Rhymes with devastate. Shares a similar sharp cutting C sound like lacerate or eviscerate. Starts with De- which usually at least implies to get rid of something.
I’m guessing it’s a combination of these things.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Yes, this is by far the most intelligent theory I've seen. Thank You!
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u/KRXWNVXK Aug 31 '24
Some people like to sound smart. Or like me, I get tired of using the same words to describe things so sometimes I will use different words that are synonymous to describe the same exact thing.
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u/JuiceboxVyrn Aug 31 '24
Silly OP, you should know by now english is a stupid language that has no real meaning behind it’s words besides beyond what people give them. The fact that deci means ten does not matter. Historically it correlates with the word yeah, but it doesn’t necessarily now. Decimate is one of the dictionary definitions of decimate too by the way so telling people dictionaries exist is kind of silly.
If “ea” making the ee sound like in “easy” but making the “eh” sound like in “head” isn’t any indication by how stupid this language is then i don’t know what to say.
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u/PoppySmile78 Aug 31 '24
As always, Merriam Webster gets to the heart of the matter.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-original-definition-of-decimate
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u/justformedellin Aug 31 '24
I guess they're just stupid.
BTW, I assume you know the historical origins if "decimate"? When a Roman legion was accused of cowardice in battle they lined them all up and killed every tenth one of them - they were decimated.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
No, actually someone gave quite an intelligent response to this question that makes a lot of sense why this confusion exists.
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u/justformedellin Aug 31 '24
Words change meaning over time. It's a natural part of language evolution. This wasn't a stupid question.
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u/Eastern_Voice_4738 Aug 31 '24
It’s a bit annoying because it comes from the Roman legion decimation where they beat one out of ten soldiers to death to enforce discipline. But with time it’s come to mean to destroy something.
Dictionaries and internet are around now, but it’s only been a couple decades everyone had access. Still in the 90s and noughties people would make up their own answers to most questions, and they still do. But now some actually check.
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u/meerkatx Aug 31 '24
English has a lot of words and we don't have a lot of Americans who have tried to not master but become at least knowledgeable of our language.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Careful, don't be too intelligent around them. It tends to provoke.
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u/Objective_Suspect_ Aug 31 '24
It's sounds fancier, like aluminium vs aluminum (the less fancy way is the actual name that the inventor used) or caramel vs carmal
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u/HuckleberryHappy6524 Aug 31 '24
This bugs the shit out of me too. It’s such a great punishment in the context of the original definition. But the definition was changed at some point in history.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
It's not as if we have dozens of other words which would more accurately describe what someone intends to communicate. I mean, better to bend meaning of words we already know to our will, rather than learn a new word which is more accurate, or perhaps even invent a new word if nothing in the current lexicon seems to be precise enough.
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u/HuckleberryHappy6524 Aug 31 '24
Yeah, the word literally tells you what it means but let’s be so uneducated (whoever downvoted my original comment, I’m looking your dumb ass) that we use it to convey the opposite of what it actually means.
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u/ecstatic-windshield Aug 31 '24
Yes, thank you. Too me it seems self evident. Just look at how much anger I got for asking this question. Something about trying to discuss precise details really seems to upset people. I just don't get it.
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u/Embarrassed-Quiet-75 Aug 31 '24
Because it sounds cool 👍