"Decimated" Means One in 10, Consarn It!

We language-loving types tend toward the tizzy when thoughtless people verb nouns ("Kinkos: The New Way to Office") and especially when they violate verbs.

Frequent violence around the world has made the latter language crime especially prevalent. "Decimate," a wonderfully specific word that originally meant "to kill one of every 10," has slouched into a synonym for "destroy." So when NPR, one of the last bastions of intelligence on the radio dial, reports "the blast decimated a taxi," we English Elves go ape. Destroying one-tenth of a taxi, after all, hardly seems newsworthy.