decimate

[thanate]

For troyfish and grauwulf and anyone else liable to find it interesting: (and my computer dictionary is mean and won't let me select and copy text, so this may be abbreviated somewhat...)

definition 2 (historical) kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.

Originally applied to a punishment for mutinous Roman Legions, but became generalized as a punishment for a group of people, or merely to kill one in ten people (as in "the virus decimated the population") before being skewed into the modern sense of destroying a large percentage of something. Purists believe that it should only be applied to people, and one can not decimate crops for instance. Originally used in English to refer to a tithe, and later to Cromwell's tax on Royalists. (er?) Even in the modern skewed sense of drastic reduction of forces, it doesn't mean "destroy utterly." (did anyone think that?)

---

So in other words, I am a bad classics major, and while I may have remembered my numbers right, I'd forgotten the punishment bit entirely. Sorry about that. (what was that I was saying about not listening to me when I'm wrong?)

Comments

[stanci.livejournal.com]

You've a better computer dictionary than me *pout*
Marrion-Webster has a definition that is "to reduce drastically especially in number", which while not "destroy utterly" generally brings to mind more than a 10% reduction in force.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

System X.4 has a program called dashboard that starts up with the finder and has a variety of little programs in it, including one that identifies itself as "Oxford American Dictionaries." It's actually the only thing I consistently use from dashboard (they've got all sorts of other things, from weather forecast to another clock (why do I need that when there's one in the menu bar?) and you can download a whole bunch of specialized ones) but it's incredibly useful to have a relatively good dictionary running at all times. Complete with decent etymologies... I'm a fan.

definitions one and two are along the lines of "reduced in number" which is the standard modern meaning-- I would have to go check the OED downstairs to tell you when the shift occurred, but I think by "historical" they more or less mean "obsolete (in modern usage)"

[stanci.livejournal.com]

I miss being able to check things on the OED... I can't sneak usage of the online version at UVA anymore :(

[thanate.livejournal.com]

this is a hidden advantage to having a mother who was a librarian, and having ended up back at home... we've got the 2-volume version downstairs (on the shelf above my father's 1894 Encyclopaedia Brittanica). I know someone who's got the one volume version, which is 8 pages printed on one and is literally impossible to read without the magnifying glass they include...

[lagged-variable.livejournal.com]

Yah, I learned that fact in a good old Obie Classics Class meself. You should have been taking intro classes in your senior year!

[thanate.livejournal.com]

do you happen to recall what class you learned it in? For some reason I feel like it's the sort of thing Mr Helm would have said, but both my roman history classes were from Hedrick, and I can't think why the subject would have come up somewhere else...

(admittedly, most of my intro classes were taken before I was planning on being a classics major, so the notes got cut up for the interesting bits and the rest discarded.)

[hydecat.livejournal.com]

I remember learning about this too, and I only took two classics classes. I want to say it was Roman history which I think I had with Hedrick.

[(Anonymous)]

Weren't we in the same class for that? I mean, he was only there for the one year, wasn't he? (wait, and were you in the Helen class, too, or was that someone else?)

My brain is going. I really ought to remember these things...

oops

[thanate.livejournal.com]

silly not-my-computer that I told not to keep me logged in...

[lagged-variable.livejournal.com]

Hm. I don't remember his name. I think he was young and new to the department. I remember some of the assignments, but not him as such. It was definitely "The History of Rome". No one on the current faculty looks familiar to me exc Von Nortwick, but I had him for "Drama in Translation".

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Yeah, everyone but Van Nortwick is new since I left. If it was your senior year, then it was the new guy who I met briefly when I came to visit and have no idea who he was, except that I think he went on to bigger and better things after a year or two... If it was before that, then presumably Charles Hedrick, who wasn't all that young really, but kind of looked it, and was on loan from someplace in southern CA because Jenny Lynn had just had their first kid the semester before and they were doing a switch-off sort of thing where they both spent a year in oberlin and then both went off to his school, I think. (I think they eventually actually got married after the advent of the second kid, also unplanned...)

[hydecat.livejournal.com]

It must have been Hedrick, since I remember him being attached to a female professor with a baby. And I think he liked Hawaian shirts. And had an informal lecturing style.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

yes, that would be the one. He was also prone to saying things like "we meet again, but your jacket is gone," when passing people in the hallway...

[skittblink.livejournal.com]

That is a wonderful definition. I must somehow try to work it into regular conversation now.

>>"we meet again, but your jacket is gone,"

Man, more people need to be like that professor.

I'm uselessly commenting on all your entries, aren't I?