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The battle was lost hundreds of years before you were born. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first quotation for the loose "to destroy or remove a large
by michaelhoffman 14y ago
The battle was lost hundreds of years before you were born. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first quotation for the loose "to destroy or remove a large proportion of" meaning of "decimate" in 1663.
- monochromatic 14y agoYeah, I know. It still strikes me as an odd usage though.
- lostlogin 14y agoPacificly, schedule a biannual renumeration review. Uttered near me. My happiness was decimated (modern usage).
- monochromatic 14y agoLinguo... IS dead.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mistercow 14y agoThat's incorrect. You seem to have some misconceptions about how decimation was used by the Romans. They did not use it on their enemies. Rather, it was used on their own military units as a disciplinary measure (usually in response to mutiny). And the way it was administered was not to pick the strongest men. Instead, they used a lottery system like drawing lots to choose which 10% would be killed. Since it was a form of military punishment, it would not have made sense to kill the strongest men. That would have reduced the deterrent effect, and also would have unnecessarily crippled that unit. Since the whole point of the practice was as a replacement for executing the entire mutinous unit, it would have been absurd to do so by destroying the cream of the crop.