Finally, someone using the term “decimated” in a reasonably accurate way. If you scroll through news stories with “decimated” in the headline it’s nearly always the wrong word to use in a given situation, and often a severe understatement of what the writer is trying to convey when they mean something more like total and complete destruction.
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And get them infected with various diseases they are not inoculated against and sexually abuse them under the guise “The native culture is more open about such things than our own”.
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I thought I was the only one left who got upset about this…
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Generally losing 10% or more of a fighting force is crippling to its ability to operate. This is far worse news for Russian than it lets on.
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Plenty of fellow pedants on this site, buddy.
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I’m not at all questioning whether it’s crippling to lose 10% of one’s forces. It’s obviously terrible news for Russia and their soldiers. I’m just saying that if it was something more like loosing half or even all of one’s forces that “decimated” would be an inaccurate term to use in that instance, and that’s usually how I see the word deployed.
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Meanwhile…
Kirill and his predecessor have had suspicious connections to the KGB.
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The only time I have ever seen the term used as originated was on the show Spartacus as a form of unit collective punishment.
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To be fair, the use you’re against is one of the definitions in Merriam-Webster: “To cause great destruction or harm to” and “to reduce drastically especially in number.”
Cambridge English has this as the primary definition: to kill a large number of something.
If people are “nearly always” using it in a specific way, doesn’t that mean the definition has evolved?
I’m just saying that if it was something more like loosing half or even all of one’s forces that “decimated” would be an inaccurate term to use in that instance, and that’s usually how I see the word deployed.
For various definitions of “loosing.” 
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In the early 1970s Kirill was the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. That job would only go to someone considered politically reliable.
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Sure, if you want to accept the reality of how languages actually work. But that’s not always something that pedants are very good at. (Although I will admit that I spelled “losing” wrong.)
About half the news headlines using that word are stories about sports, where folks aren’t being killed or reduced in number at all. They’re just losing a game.
In this case I guess what bugs me is that the etymology of the word includes a very specific number. If the definition of “quarter” changed over time to mean a generic fraction rather than specifically 1/4 it would take me a long time to accept that too.
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Agreed. And they aren’t heroic when they make a triple play, either.
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Heh. Yeah. Along the lines of Farming Simulator.
‘Squaddie Simulator! Dig holes! Go for long, uncomfortable rides in big green vehicles! Try to survive the Arctic level with Desert kit!’
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That would be radioactive forest fires.
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A fascinating read.
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Well, on the numbers a little bit upthread it may be more like 1 in 6
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Just for the sake of out pedanting the pedants.
Words shift in meaning over time. “Decimate” hasn’t meant literally removing 1 in 10 in a long time.
Even the Romans didn’t use it that strictly, and even as a formal practice it didn’t always involve 10% of people.
The primary use in English has been “remove a lot” for longer than we’ve been alive. And we tend not to hear these complaints about other words with other contexts. Like “awful” where the common definition is nearly the opposite of what it originally meant. Nor do we hear people insist that “decimate” has to involve a deliberate practice with the drawing of lots, which is the historical meaning people are pointing to.
By your own standard this isn’t a decimation. It wasn’t a punishment, there was no lottery.
Which is fine. This amounts to insisting people not use figurative language.
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So, sextidecimated?
Literally.
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