Category: language

That’s part of page 105 of the 1952 edition of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. I looked up the word after I read the plot summary in the Wikipedia entry about the film Inferno (2016), which currently says:

[The villain’s bioweapon has] the potential of decimating the world’s population.

It could be argued that a 50% reduction in the world’s population, technically, does not count as “decimating”, since—as has been smugly pointed out—the meaning of “decimate” is etymologically tied to a figure of 10%.

In fact, it’s been argued (even more smugly) that “decimate” had another, earlier meaning, which was financial in nature; supposedly “decimate” meant “tithe”.

I think I agree with Fowler that “decimate” can now legitimately mean “destroy a large proportion” but should still be avoided when the context contains a specific proportion.

See below for more on my reasons for (finally) ceasing to believe exclusively in the historical meaning and my thoughts on how to carefully use the word in its widely accepted modern sense.

Continue reading I gladly concede the loss of historical ‘decimate’.

This is a notice in the lift here in Kent Vale notifying residents of the management’s intent to conduct an exercise in which they will clear the bicycles that have been abandoned in the bicycle rack areas.

The lineup of four nouns (bicycle, clearance, exercise, notice) verges on the cumbersome, but in principle you could go on modifying nouns with other nouns until the cows come home.

For your ruminating pleasure, I present this truly unwieldy noun phrase:

university freshman student campus dormitory ground floor kitchen cleaning schedule establishment group selection committee meeting date email notification recipient complaint management task handler assignment deadline

It denotes the deadline before which someone has to assign a handler for the task of managing complaints from people who have received email notifications about a committee meeting for the purpose of selecting a group for establishing the schedule according to which people will clean the kitchen on the ground floor of a freshman dorm on the campus of a university—except that it’s ever so much more concise.

Chinese largely copes without articles and prepositions; surely English could, too!