El Reg decimates English language

Mind you, a plucky few are still using the word as God intended. Under the headline "Sacramento city jobs could be decimated" the Sacramento Business Journal explains²: "Budget problems mean the city of Sacramento is 'facing elimination of approximately 500 positions' in the coming year, according to a report to the City Council released Friday, or nearly one out of every 10 city jobs."

Good show, although we suspect the inclusion here of "nearly" might not satisfy purists. If the total of job losses is not in fact as anticipated, and perhaps even greater, might we suggest the use of inkhorn neologisms "nonimate" or "octomate"?

In summary: decimate is now used to mean "destroy". This is neither incorrect nor is it an outrage against common linguistic decency, and to say otherwise is, frankly, pissing in the wind.

The English language is changing, for better or worse. There are many who view the apparently unstoppable rise of greengrocers apostrophe's³, split infinitives, dangling participles, loss of the aspirated "wh", blah, blah, blah, with a sort of soul-sapping dread.

Back in 1926, however, the famed HW Fowler was chilled enough in his Modern English Usage to acknowledge that the evolution of English was not necessarily leading inexorably to catastrophe. The use of decimate to mean “the destruction in any way of a large proportion of anything reckoned by number” was, he conceded, "natural".

We'll leave it to you lot to ponder George Bush's nucular policy and the scandal of "for free", and conclude by noting that on the matter of "nouveau cretanism", we personally prefer "usuage", "ignorent", "ignorence" rendered as "usage", "ignorant" and "ignorance", but then we're a bit old skool ourselves when it comes to spelling, innit? ®

Notes

¹ The OED agrees, stating that since the mid-17th century, decimate has been used to mean "destroy or remove a large proportion of".

² For more on the US battle of decimation, try this article from the Boston Globe.

³ In 1985, Robert Burchfield wrote in his excellent The English Language: "The prevalence of incorrect instances of the use of the apostrophe at the present time....suggests that the time is close at hand when this moderately useful device should be abandoned."