![\"alice\"](\"http:\/\/writer-insighter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/alice.jpg\")
<\/a>It’s EU political correctness gone mad.<\/p>\nHis biggest worry wasn’t that the world would end – if it was he wouldn’t have got the job at the Mail – but that he wouldn’t be able to cope with the consequences. Being a Daily Mail person he didn’t bother to do anything to solve the problem by learning\u00a0how to sew or make a fire for example, but by mangling the language a bit further while saying how terrible it all was.<\/p>\n
“Let’s say a terrible pandemic has decimated most of the population,” he gushed. I know this is a favourite Daily Mail fantasy, but let’s stop it right there.<\/p>\n
Nothing can decimate most of anything for one simple reason: decimate means reducing something by a tenth. Unless John Preston is stratifying the population, which presumably he’d do along the lines of strivers and scroungers, the sentence is gibberish, like most of the rest of the paper.<\/p>\n
Given that he wrote ‘most of the population’ he can’t be stratifying in any major sense. Instead, he’s simply conflating his own ignorance and the desire to use big words to imply he’s really clever and making more of a mockery of his newspaper than presumably the editor also intended.<\/p>\n
Decimated does not mean devastated. Yes, it sounds similar. But it’s a different word. For a good reason: it means something else. This is what words are for. Meaning something. Not whatever you want them to mean, or you might as well strawberry blancmange.<\/p>\n
It was the Romans, as it so often is in our progressive country. I’m not even going near the arsy ‘no, it’s about the practice of executing one man in ten in a mutinous Roman legion.’ I don’t know if it also means that or not, but it’s irrelevant.<\/p>\n
Decimus means ten. In Latin. That’s what it means. No more, no less. Ten. So decimate has to mean reduce by a tenth, whether it’s Roman soldiers, survivors of the apocalypse or eggs in a basket. What it doesn’t mean is destroy a lot of.<\/p>\n
There were no WMDs Tony. None. As You Knew<\/a>.<\/h3>\nI blame Tony Blair, a bit but not entirely like the Daily Mail. At least he’d obviously read some Victorian literature when he was at Oxford.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I use a word,\u2019 Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, \u2018it means just what I choose it to mean \u2014 neither more nor less.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\u2019The question is,\u2019 said Alice, \u2018whether you can make words mean so many different things.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\u2019The question is,\u2019 said Humpty Dumpty, \u2018which is to be master \u2014 that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThrough the Looking Glass.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\u2019The question is,\u2019 said Alice, \u2018whether you can make words mean so many different things.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u2019The question is,\u2019 said Humpty Dumpty, \u2018which is to be master \u2014 that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Through the Looking Glass.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n