grammar girl here. This is the final week that I'm going to give you a peek at

the entries in my new book 101 Trouble Some Words. Today we'll talk about the

words decimate and all right. So first, decimate. When I was doing radio

interviews last week to promote the book, multiple people called in to

complain that other people are using the word decimate wrong. So I thought it

would be a good entry to include this week. What's the trouble? Well, some people

claim to the belief that decimate can only mean a reduction by 10%. Here's

some background. The Roman military wasn't as interested in justice as it

wasn't order. We get the word decimate from the Roman's brutal practice of

punishing mutinous units by having the men draw lots and then requiring the

troops who were to survive to kill the unlucky 10% who chose the wrong lot.

Decimate has its etymological root in the Latin word for 10th and it

shares that root with words like decimal and decimator. Because of these

historical and etymological roots, some people believe that the only proper way

to use decimate is to talk about something reduced by precisely 10%. But usage

experts disagree. The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English usage, for example,

notes that decimate has never been used this way in English. Although there's

an entry for the reduction by 10% meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary, it

contains no example sentences, which is unusual. The Merriam Webster editors

believe that the OED definition was included merely to bridge the gap between

the Roman practice and the standard English meaning, which is a massive or

severe reduction. So what should you do? Use decimate without fear to describe a

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