"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
So, my wife’s family are all from Norway–grandparents were LEGAL immigrants in early 20th Century. OK, nothing weird there. After all, they weren’t Swedish or anything. *heh*
But… Windows Update had an optional update suggested for this lil toy computer that I use sitting here beside her: the Norwegian Language Pack.
Kinda creeps me out. How does M$ know these things?
*heh*
Nothing much, just another now less useful word, the product of subliterate morons (usually in the Hivemind and Academia–people with NO excuse for misusing words, since, after all, words are their trade) misusing it so often:
decimate
Look at the word. Really look. “Deci-” is a prefix we’re all familiar with (well, all the folks who read here, meaning at least literate enough to read their way out of a paper bag). From the Latin, “decimus,” which means (roughly) “a tenth part”. Yep, until subliterate morons began debasing the word, “decimate” meant to punish (by death) a tenth of a group of people. It came into being as a punishment for a century of Roman soldiers whenever any of their group deserted in battle: any ONE soldier fled the field (or tried to) and 1/10 of the soldiers of that century were selected by lot for execution.
Decimation was a terrible punishment and a strong pressure on the group to make sure ALL soldiers stuck to the line of battle.
“Decimate” as it has come to be used as a result of influence by dumbasses no longer has that useful meaning of a destruction of a tenth of a population but means only the destruction of some meaninglessly general and unknown number. “Decimated” as used by even more massively stupid people is sometimes used in the construction, “utterly decimated” to mean “completely destroyed”.
These “people” make me want to puke. Yes, I meant “people” as a sneer.
…would think that only half the human race was up to no good.
And only an idiot would think that less than 90% of Congress was up to anything BUT “no good”.
Just sayin’.