Comments on: Dear Clusterflock: This is preying on my mind.

By: Nathan Harrison

Nathan Harrison — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:22:00 +0000

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, "decimate" has also been taken to mean "reduce to one-tenth" since at least 1788. It's not a problem confined to the Americas, either: the majority of its usage in Britain is the more debatable "annihilated" meaning, as well.

By: Cooper Renner

Cooper Renner — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:32:28 +0000

I'm being tangental, but a long time ago Donald Hall pointed out to me (in critiquing a poem) that I had misused a word in the same way it is habitually misused in sloppy American discourse, and that word is decimate. As the root should clearly indicate, it is related to the Latin word for ten, and it is a Latin term (which I should have known since I studied Roman history) which means to kill one in ten. A unit of the army, for example, might have one in ten of its soldiers executed as a punishment for some offense. We, of course, use it to mean almost annihilate, which is virtually a reversal of its intensity.

By: Rick Neece

Rick Neece — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:46:23 +0000

andrea, happens all the time.

By: andrea

andrea — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:32:10 +0000

I can’t stop reading your name as Nick Reece, and THAT is preying on my mind.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:28:46 +0000

I’m going to stick with “awesome.” That’s my word that’s come unglued. Well – that and “gay” – butt I don’t know if I want to touch that can of cooch this early.

By: Cindy Scroggins

Cindy Scroggins — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:41:05 +0000

Deron thought butt.

By: Rick Neece

Rick Neece — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:12:51 +0000

I like but, but I love butt.

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:57:51 +0000

Here’s an example, taken out of context from one of my own comments:

And: Mine’s back up now, but it is still sucking the same suck song as over the past sucky months.

By: Deron Bauman

Deron Bauman — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:15:57 +0000

the word I can’t stop thinking about is very simple but it seems to negate everything that comes before it.

By: Daryl Scroggins

Daryl Scroggins — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:18:13 +0000

Great post, Rick. The trouble I’m having is that we are all word people here and tend to reach for accuracy unless we are deliberately appropriating words such as ” shunt” for its connotative qualities. Or crepuscular (which is not to say that accuracy has been sacrificed here on Cluster!). My first impulse was to mention words that are commonly mentioned in this realm: moot means debatable: deplorable means lamentable; anxious means apprehensive rather than eager; and so on. But then there are those cases that go beyond the whole accuracy thing. “Cooch Behar” is a state in India , for instance–but Cooch is enough, I think, for some purposes. I have also found myself using the word “fistula” to refer to certain vacuous persons.

But an oblique reference that comes to mind is this: once when I was about eight, in church with my sister and my parents and longing for freedom, a scragly boy next to me on the pew leaned over and told me that “bosom” meant “tits.” I was instantly delighted by this and have been since.