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I understood the origin of "Decimate" to be that the threat to
decimate was used against slaves or prisoners of war, to keep them obeying
orders. I am not an authority on that information but it makes perfect sense and
helps to explain how the word should be used. Slaves would be lined up and every
tenth one would be killed. There would be no use killing all
the slaves, as then who would do the work? Killing 90% of them would be almost
as stupid and messy. More importantly, it would be of little value to the
captors, as a deterrent for recalcitrant slaves. If slaves only had a 10% chance
of living, why would they bother obeying orders. However killing or threatening
to kill 10% of them (hence the DEC in the word), provided they all knew about
it, would tend to keep them in line, so to speak. Not very nice welfare towards
slaves, however that didn't matter. I am sure that the word is of an old origin
and therefore is unlikely to have been invented to deal with esoteric thoughts
on wild animal populations.
My point is, what is the point of having a word with a defined
use, if people (not "persons") are going to use it to mean something
quite opposite? If a word is well-known to be misused, then it is best not to
use it. If you mean cull, kill, devastate or annihilate, then use that word
instead.
Reid's suggestion below may be correct but would
make it even more confusing.
Let us get back to
business.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From:
Reid <>
To:
<>
Date:
Thursday, 6 November 2003 11:29
Subject: [BIRDING-AUS]
Decimate
The most probable correct antonym for
'decimate' would be to use the Latin
root for 'ify', meaning "to
make or cause to become".
Thus, to make something become
one-tenth of its former quantity or state,
the word would be
'decify'.
Regards
Reid
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