I've made my grumbling peace with this particular linguistic drift.
However, my secret to keeping lower blood pressure (alas, for this issue alone) is to substitute "devastated" every time I see "decimated" as a matter of cognitive protection.
I've made my grumbling peace with this particular linguistic drift.
However, my secret to keeping lower blood pressure (alas, for this issue alone) is to substitute "devastated" every time I see "decimated" as a matter of cognitive protection.
That's not a bad idea, but it's a purely personal fix. My concern is that one of these I'm going to use the word to mean what it actually means (I write military history) and my readers may misinterpret it. The arc of language is toward simplicity, but I fear the arc of American (it is NOT English according to my English---NOT British---friends) is so sharp it's really aimed for illiteracy. Just saw a very interesting youtube video on the decline of reading in Late Antiquity mirroring the decline of the Roman Empire. Illiteracy breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds passivity (read: stupidity), and passive/stupid people can be led more easily.
I've made my grumbling peace with this particular linguistic drift.
However, my secret to keeping lower blood pressure (alas, for this issue alone) is to substitute "devastated" every time I see "decimated" as a matter of cognitive protection.
That's not a bad idea, but it's a purely personal fix. My concern is that one of these I'm going to use the word to mean what it actually means (I write military history) and my readers may misinterpret it. The arc of language is toward simplicity, but I fear the arc of American (it is NOT English according to my English---NOT British---friends) is so sharp it's really aimed for illiteracy. Just saw a very interesting youtube video on the decline of reading in Late Antiquity mirroring the decline of the Roman Empire. Illiteracy breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds passivity (read: stupidity), and passive/stupid people can be led more easily.