It is true that the earliest English use of “decimate” meant “to select and destroy one-tenth of.” That’s because when “decimate” was first used in English, it was primarily in contexts that described the harsh military discipline of the Romans. “Decimate” in the “one-tenth” meaning came into English in the late sixteenth century, and by the mid-seventeenth century its use had been expanded to refer to causing great harm. For about two hundred years, these two senses lived side by side without any peevery touching them.
This came up in whichever Dresden Files book I read recently. Silly
