Although I cannot remember any examples I use to get pretty annoyed when things like what you’re telling about ‘decimate’ happens, and it happens a lot. Lately I’m trying to be more tolerant and think that it must be the that way language evolves and all that crap (sorry but I’m reading ‘Catcher in the rye’ and it’s sort of ‘catchy’) but, anyway, it keeps bothering me.
Since, due to my lack of knowledge, I can’t write without a dictionary at hand I’m going to transcript the definition I have of ‘decimation’ that fully agrees with your posting.


decimate —tr. v.-mat·ed., -mat·ing., -mates. 1. To destroy or kill a large part of. 2. To select by lot and kill one in every ten of. [Lat. decimare, decimat- < decimus, tenth < decem, ten.] dec'i·ma´tion n.

USAGE: Decimate originally meant to kill every tenth person, a punishment sometimes inflicted by Roman commanders. The meaning has been extended to include the destruction of any large proportion of a group: Famine decimated the population. The Usage Panel accepts this extension but considers that decimate should not be used to describe the destruction of a single person, or an entire group, or any specified percentage other than one-tenth; avoid a sentence such as The famine decimated 37 per cent of the population.

Microsoft Bookshelf © 1987 - 1992 Microsoft Corp. All Rights Reserved. The American Heritage Dictionary and Electronic Thesaurus are licensed from Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © 1986, 1987 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Based upon Roget's II: The New Thesaurus.


Juan Maria.