3 ms·
Look in any dictionary and you'll find that that decimate means to devastate aswell. Language is what people speak not what people proscribe in books or the in
by cenamus 1y ago
Look in any dictionary and you'll find that that decimate means to devastate aswell.
Language is what people speak not what people proscribe in books or the internet.
- tgv 1y agoIf frequency of use is an argument, one could argue that to decimate might not even be a word.
- kaechle 1y agoCorrect. To decimate is the infinitive form of the verb decimate.
- card_zero 1y agoPrescribe, and it's both of these things.
- jjallen 1y agoExactly. If it is used a certain way by enough people, that is also an accepted definition. Dictionaries lag actual speech and language I suppose.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> If it is used a certain way by enough people, that is also an accepted definition. This mentality seems to be prevalent in the USA, in Germany, on the opposite, many people see this topic differently - just because a lot of people use a certain word/term wrong does not make it right.
- cenamus 1y agoAnd it annoys me endlessly. People can't let go of the genitive, even if it's dead in loads of dialects. If people knew how many words were just "made up" in the last couple centuries to match the vocabulary of Latin or French... they'd lose their mind