[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The word no longer means that. It now means "destroying a large portion of something". And it wasn't originally coined for that Roman punishment, which was a later usage.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2...roy-one-tenth/

An interesting article. Also the OED => "rhetorically or loosely. To destroy or remove a large proportion of; to subject to severe loss, slaughter, or mortality."

So using the same adjective to describe complainers as is used in the article, it is just fine for the less "peevish" of us to use decimate in that way, as many of us do.

Those opposed to change should, perhaps, be maintaining a stance that preserves the language as that in the around 6th and 7th centuries when English emerged out of the Germanic languages and dialects, rather than trying to drive a stake in the ground at some more recent arbitrary point in the evolution of the language.