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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • Unnecessary or superfluous. For example: calling an ATM (automated teller machine) an “ATM machine”.

    You seem to have missed the example I gave.

    If it were phrased “they decimated 10 percent of the population” you’re either using the word as people understand it wrong or your saying they killed 10 percent of the population twice right next to each other, which is you know, redundant.

    What would be redundant in this circumstance is saying decimate (e.g. to kill 10 percent of a group) 10 percent of the population. This is of course assuming that the person reading it knows the historical definition of decimate.

    Furthermore I used the two different phrasings as examples because if you just wrote “they decimated the population”, most people would assume a number larger than 10 percent. But if you try and clarify by stating “they decimated 10 percent of the population”, and they know its historical definition, you’re being redundant.

    So in conclusion, using decimate would either confuse people or be redundant.

    As an aside; when you’re trying to report something, whether that be a current event or a historical one, you should be using language that the most people will be able to understand for the sake of clarity.


  • If it were phrased “they decimated the population” most would assume from the phrasing that it mean that you’re saying that a large proportion was killed, because that’s how that word is actually used in the English language. If it were phrased “they decimated 10 percent of the population” you’re either using the word as people understand it wrong or your saying they killed 10 percent of the population twice right next to each other, which is you know, redundant.

    The definition of words reflect how we use them. An interesting fact is that scientists use Latin for scientific names of things because no one speaks Latin so the meanings of those words will not change with time. It’s the same in courts, you’ll find that a lot of old English words that aren’t commonly used in everyday conversation are used and that’s so that the meaning of things stay consistent over time.