A Grammar lesson!
Most people today are using the word "decimate" to mean completely destroying something.
The word "decimate" means to reduce by one tenth. If we want to convey that something has been completely destroyed, then we can use that phrase; "completely destroyed."
When we say the city was decimated, we mean that it has been reduced to one tenth of its value.
Also many people are misusing the terms "less" and "fewer."
When we have a quantity that has to be measured, such as flour, then we say "we have less flour in the bin."
When we have items that can be counted, we say "there are fewer apples in the bin."
The English language is becoming based on slang, too many people are uninterested in excellence in anything, we are sounding more uneducated even among the educated, as the news casters mispronounce and misuse the English language regularly and many people couldn't care less how they sound.
Perhaps it is time to attempt to clean up our speech, so that we can be believable when we claim to know something. We can all learn more, let us not stop learning because of arrogance and refusal to admit we have been lazy in this matter of English.
We cannot expect a person who is using English as a second language to be versed in all the different nuances of the language, however, those of us who have been raised in this country, been in school at least 12 years of our life and more, should be much more adept at the language than we are.
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