The Misuse of "Decimate" and Other Mistakes I'm Trying to Calm TF Down About
And how that's going for me
Sarah Bond’s recent excellent article in Hyperallergic about asking students to critique ChatGPT’s critique of the historical accuracy of the movie Gladiator didn’t mention what I consider the movie’s most annoying unforced error: the hugely climactic moment when Maximus pulls off his mask to reveal his identity to Commodus and declares, “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” It’s SO GOOD… but would it have killed them to use the more accurate order “Decimus Meridius Maximus”? I honestly don’t think it would have made the speech any less satisfying!
I know I just complained about that tiny quibble for a whole paragraph, but for the most part I’m pretty over it. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I could probably watch that scene without having to pause it and give an impromptu lecture on Roman naming conventions that literally nobody would enjoy.
Other mistakes have been harder.
Decimate: over it, more or less
Take “decimate,” a pretty commonly used word, which comes from the Latin for “tenth”, decimus, which was incidentally a very common Roman praenomen or FIRST name”, not “middle name”, in case the writers of Gladiator were wondering. (I’m crushing it at showing just how over that I am, right?) The Roman practice of decimatio, used to punish large groups, involved executing one tenth of the group’s members.
Compared to the common use of the word to mean something more like “destroy utterly,” destroying a tenth might seem pretty mild. But try to get your kids to reduce their number of toys by a tenth and see just how much they hate it! (I’ve tried it, and I can confirm: so very, very much.) Also, the nine-tenths who weren’t selected were the ones who had to carry out the actual executions, which makes the whole thing even more twisted and brutal.
It used to really bother me when I saw headlines in newspapers that used “decimate” wrong, but I’m ready to let this one go. As some guy in Gladiator says, “People should know when they’re conquered.” This battle is lost, like my battle to keep my home from gradually filling up with Legos. It’s time to move on and buy thicker slippers.
Peruse: still in the “bargaining” stage of grief
This one hurts. The true meaning of this word is to read thoroughly and carefully – the per- prefix brings that connotation. But 9 out of 10 times when I hear it used, people mean the exact opposite, “to skim” or “to browse casually.”
I’m not ok with this. Whenever I hear someone use the word in this way, I enter a brief, vivid daydream in which I maliciously pretend they had used it correctly – “I’m just going to peruse this catalogue.” “Oh! Sounds like you’ll be a while, I’m going to go grab a cup of coffee!” I don’t actually say that, because I’m already enough of a pain in the ass and I don’t want to be a total monster. I also don’t think too much about what it says about me that my fantasies are about being an even more pedantic nightmare than I already am.
Plurals of “octopus”: a work in progress
Fun, true story: last May, my older sister had a party in Jamaica to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her destination wedding there. While circulating at the cocktail hour I ran into a guy I probably haven’t seen in ten-ish years, and I led with “You might not remember me, but I’m Donna, Randi’s sister,” because I’ve had far too many awkward social interactions where it quickly became obvious that only one of two people remembered the other and I’m not going to fall into that particular trap again. To my absolute horror, he said, “Oh, I remember you! When we met at Randi’s wedding you gave me a Latin quiz at a swim-up bar!”
As my soul left my mortified body, I attempted a self-deprecating chuckle and said, “Oh no, really? Although, to be fair, that’s totally plausible.”
“Yeah. It was about the plural of ‘octopus,’” he clarified.
“YUP THAT ONE IS A BIT OF A PET PEEVE OF MINE” I said, normally. My head did not rotate The Exorcist-style while I screeched something incoherent about “octopus” being Greek and not Latin. This obviously represents personal growth on my part in the last decade and a half. I’m chalking that one up in the “win” column.
On the other hand, my ten-year-old is doing a marine biology unit in science class and used the word “octopi” just a few weeks ago, and I corrected her a little too forcefully on acceptable alternatives (obviously “octopodes” is the most technically correct plural, but I will also accept “octopuses” or using “octopus” as both singular and plural). When my partner said, “You know, I think Merriam-Webster accepts ‘octopi’ as a common enough usage to be considered correct now,” my eyes narrowed and I hissed, “No child of mine will ever use ‘octopi’ as the plural of ‘octopus.’”1
So, in conclusion, growth isn’t linear, and my children are going to grow up to be super duper well adjusted.
Kevin in Brooklyn 99, a classics professor, saying “I don’t bring home Beowulf” as though Beowulf were The Iliad: I will die on this hill
I will never get over this, ever. Fortunately the show redeemed itself with the season 6 episode “The Bimbo”, in which the entire Classics department is IMO note-perfect.
A note of caution
I got this far into this newsletter and then realized Sarah Scullin addressed half of these (and so many more) in Eidolon’s idle musings blog seven damn years ago. Progress is a journey, not a destination.
What hills are you dying on? Share in the comments!
FOR THE RECORD, my 10-year-old is even more pedantic than I am, and appreciated the clarification and can’t wait to wield it against her peers in science class. So, that’s… something.