‘Decimate’ means more today than it did in ancient Rome: NPR

If you’ve been keeping track of the news lately, you may have noticed that a certain word has suddenly become President Trump’s favorite: “decimate.”

He has used it extensively to describe US military action against Iran. Take, for example, a portion of his April 1 address to the nation regarding Operation Epic Fury: “We have defeated and completely destroyed Iran. They have been destroyed militarily and economically.”

Today, most people know the word as a synonym for “destroy.” But few people understand its origins – or that it has come to mean something different than it used to.

Etymologist Michael de Van of the University of Basel in Switzerland says decimal marks go back to Latin. decimal, Through Decimus, Meaning tenth. In its original Latin form, Decimal “It meant taking out and killing one-tenth of a group of soldiers,” he says.

De Van says, it meant something very specific – a brutal form of discipline, not a vague notion of mass destruction.

According to Gregory Aldrete, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, “extermination” was a punishment inflicted by Roman army veterans on their own comrades, “in cases where an entire group of soldiers was usually guilty of something like cowardice on the battlefield.”

What was the Roman destruction?

Aldrete states that such punishment was rarely meted out, but when it was, it was carried out with cold-blooded efficiency. “They would have the group they wanted to punish randomly draw a lottery, and then every tenth soldier would be followed by nine others to death.”

The idea behind this punishment was that the sacrifice of 10% of the army’s soldiers was enough to have a lasting impact on the others, preventing future misconduct without losing too much military strength.

Roman historians Plutarch and Appian both mention an example of destruction during the Third Servile War in 72 BC. General Marcus Licinius Crassus was fighting the famous Roman gladiator Spartacus, who was leading a large slave rebellion against Rome. In combat against rebels, a unit fled the battlefield. Crassus, in turn, ordered destruction.

Since then, “historians have wondered why he did it,” says Barry Strauss, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Speculation is that Spartacus’ rebellion was a serious threat to Roman rule; His group of rebels ravaged southern Italy and defeated several Roman armies. “Crassus may have thought the army needed to be really shocked by his behavior,” says Strauss, adding that Romans could be very violent, but Romans were also extremely practical.

Strauss says that Crassus was “a very ambitious politician” who “would not have done this unless he thought he could get away with it.”

How did Decimate become synonymous with destruction?

De Van says that at the time the term was being used to describe military punishment, another form of it also appeared in some Bible translations – where “taking a tenth” meant that someone gave 10% of their income to the church.

He says that between the end of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the term seems to have largely disappeared before being revived by classical scholars. And shortly thereafter, de Van says, the definition was overturned: “The meaning becomes Holiday Only one tenth” was, and generally still is, synonymous with destruction.

By about the middle of the 17th century, it had come to be used only in the sense of “destruction”.

Since that time, the word has become almost every pundit’s favorite thing. American essayist Richard Grant White in his 1870 book Words and Their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English Language, The use of the term as a synonym for wholesale slaughter was described as “absolutely ridiculous” by a Civil War correspondent.

In 2008, Lake Superior State University placed “Decimate” on it annual list of extinct wordssuggesting that “word-watchers have been calling for its destruction for years” due to its alleged misuse.

However, for some people the semantic struggle continues. NPR copy editor Preeti Arun recalls the time she worked for foreign policy An executive editor of the magazine contacted him. “They said a reader had emailed us about allegedly misusing the word ‘decimate’ in an article.” He pushed back. “Meanings change over time,” he told her.

“Language evolves over time,” says Arun. She says that any older generation can be angry with the way the younger generation uses language. But “the reality is that the older generation dies out. So the younger generation’s word choices… (are) always winning out.”