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]

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...