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> "They’ve decimated the taxi industry. The number of LA taxi trips dropped 30% from 2012." Decimate means to reduce by 10%, hence deci.
by rocky1138 10y ago
> "They’ve decimated the taxi industry. The number of LA taxi trips dropped 30% from 2012."
Decimate means to reduce by 10%, hence deci.
- nercht12 10y agoThat definition is listed as "obsolete" with regards to that term: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/decimate http://www.dictionary.com/browse/decimate
- rocky1138 10y agoFrom your own link: "Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle."
- aninhumer 10y agoYes, because "decimate" means greatly reduced rather than eliminated, so the example would be like saying "Drought has greatly reduced 80 of cattle" which doesn't make much sense.
- potatolicious 10y agohttp://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/09/does-decimate-mean-destroy-one-tenth/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/09/does-decimate-mea... Decimate may have had an archaic definition like that (even then, the jury's still out), but the modern definition of "destruction of a substantial portion of" has been well accepted even in academia. Unless we want to start using words only in their original, millenia-old definitions can we drop this thing every time someone uses decimation in the "wrong" way?
- rocky1138 10y agoI think the issue I have is one of measurements. We use things like deci, mega, kilo, etc. In this case, decimetre means 10 centimetres.
- aninhumer 10y agoSo do you also object to people referring to things as "gigantic" or "microscopic" which aren't in the order of a gigametres or a micrometres respectively?