Like yea Elon Musk deserves to be thrown into a mineshaft but these clowns want to do it because he wanted negotiations which would stop the fucking war.

Liberals are such clowns, in their weird world Putin himself invaded Ukraine just for the fun of killing Ukrainian civilians and wholesome Azov soldiers and not for their political interests.

Also the op name is AmericanVet304 lmao.

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is pedantic as hell, but it always bothers me when people use "decimate" to mean "destroy" when it actually means "reduce by one tenth."

    :ohnoes: Will no one stop Putin's brutal and extremely precise campaign of destroying 10% of the Ukrainian army?! :ohnoes:

    • thisismyrealname [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      it doesn't mean "reduce by one tenth" because no one uses it that way anymore

      linguistic prescriptivism btfo

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I will allow this instance of prescriptivism because it's often unintentionally funny.

    • Rem [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Counterpoint: it's a cool sounding word and makes nerds frustrated when u use it wrong :meow-tankie:

      • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        You will use the word to mean exactly the same thing it meant 2,000 years ago or else! :angery:

      • Nagarjuna [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The russian army used the clips in their guns to decimate their opponents. It was literally awesome.

    • hostilearchitecture [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the modern definition has absolutely changed.

      The origin of the word though is elucidating, because it did always mean a disaster, it's just that 10,% swings were considered massive. People nowadays are so used to :stonks-up: :stonks-down: that a change of 10,% is almost blase, so people assume "decimate" means a much larger change than 10,%.

      • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        IIRC its association with devastation and tragedy was because it goes back to a Roman military punishment. As an extreme form of punishment for a group of soldiers, they would have to line up and every 10th man is killed, mostly at random.

        • Vncredleader
          ·
          2 years ago

          didn't the rest of the unit have to do the killing as well or am I misremembering?

            • Vncredleader
              ·
              2 years ago

              checked

              Each group drew lots (sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot of the shortest straw fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning, clubbing, or stabbing. The remaining soldiers were often given rations of barley instead of wheat (the latter being the standard soldier's diet) for a few days, and required to bivouac outside the fortified security of the camp for some time.

              particularly brutal shit

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      As far semantic shift is concerned, the word just went from "reduced by tenth" to "reduced to tenth," which isn't that bad as far as semantic shift is concerned. It's like biweekly could mean once every two weeks or twice a week. Compare that with "terrific," which had the original definition of "pertaining to or having the characteristic of terror" or "manufacture," which originally meant "handmade."

    • CarmineCatboy [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      decimate can also mean beheading in some languages. as in, reducing the upper 1/10th of the human body