I often hear people say that something was decimated. It seems to be used when a building or a town or a large group of people (army, community, etc.) is severely damaged, totally ruined, or having lots of people killed. Just this morning I heard it again on the news, talking about a factory that was totally destroyed by fire, and saying that the building had been “decimated.”

Originally, the word was decimare (deci- is the prefix for ten), which referred to the Roman custom of punishing mutinous legions by standing them all up and killing every tenth soldier.

While I still think of the original definition by default, the American Heritage Dictionary says that 66% of their panel accepted the definition of the killing of a large proportion of a group. But that’s specifically referring to killing. When the definition is expanded to include destruction that isn’t killing, only 26% of their panel said that was appropriate.

Current music: Neroli, by Brian Eno