While I acknowledge, and generally believe in the evolution of language, I refuse to succumb to the trend of colloquial usage coming to mean the opposite of a word's original intent.
To illustrate the point better, "literally" has now also been defined to mean "figuratively" in the common parlance, which means that, sadly, there is no appropriate word for literally that is unambiguous.
Similarly so with decimate. Its originalist intent is to reduce by one tenth, so, colloquial adoption aside, I reject any definition that resembles its polar opposite.
Clearly, the colloquial usage, as tptacek has done, is acceptable to many, but if words are intended to actually mean things, instead of just send an appropriate contextual vibe, then there should be some degree of rigidity to language that pushes back against its less meaningful and more ambiguous adoption.
To illustrate the point better, "literally" has now also been defined to mean "figuratively" in the common parlance, which means that, sadly, there is no appropriate word for literally that is unambiguous.
Similarly so with decimate. Its originalist intent is to reduce by one tenth, so, colloquial adoption aside, I reject any definition that resembles its polar opposite.
Clearly, the colloquial usage, as tptacek has done, is acceptable to many, but if words are intended to actually mean things, instead of just send an appropriate contextual vibe, then there should be some degree of rigidity to language that pushes back against its less meaningful and more ambiguous adoption.