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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37110 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I can never remember whether decimated was originally supposed to mean "reduced to 10%" or "reduced by 10%". If the latter, then the common usage of decimated is pretty off, of course. But if the former, then it's not too different in meaning. Perhaps that's where the colloquial usage crept in to begin with.

I think the confusion comes from decimation being really really really bad as a punishment. It's intentionally losing 10% of your men, and it's a vicious psychological punishment on the rest. As a result it has this connotation of absolute disaster and came into common usage that way. Much moreso than "losing 10%." It doesn't really make much sense to use it to refer to 10% attrition generally, but rather to a situation in which 10% are lost and the rest are horribly traumatized by guilt.

Killing the 10th man actually erased the guilt of having mutinied/retreated, without having to mess around assigning individual responsibility. Pretty clever system for a society that's trying to field large armies without a professional military, which is why it was only a thing during the Republic expansion

I'm sure that's where the confusion comes from, but it's easy to remember the correct meaning when you know the origin of the word. Quoting Wikipedia:

In the military of ancient Rome, decimation (from Latin decimatio 'removal of a tenth') was a form of military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort. The discipline was used by senior commanders in the Roman army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as cowardice, mutiny, desertion, and insubordination, and for pacification of rebellious legions. The procedure was an attempt to balance the need to punish serious offences with the realities of managing a large group of offenders.

A cohort (roughly 480 soldiers) selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten. 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.

It wouldn't make a lot of sense to kill 90% of your soldiers as a form of punishment, if the goal is to improve the discipline among the remainder. You would be left with so few that you might as well have killed all of them, and that's before considering the practical matter that if you condemn 90% of the group to death, those who are designated to die and have nothing left to lose would likely fight and overpower the lucky 10%.

In short, this punishment can only work with a minority being killed. That's why decimation means “reduced by 10%”, not “reduced to 10%”.

Just remember it as 9 guys beating the 10th one to death. Not exactly a mnemonic but pretty memorable.

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