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6 EVIDENCE COLLECTIONSSEARCH
THE GRAPH.
Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
013
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
verbexact headword
decimate
To destroy or reduce drastically; borrowed from a Latin verb built on “tenth” and first used in English for killing every tenth member of a group.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjective · nouncontrarian claim
decimal
Based on ten or tenths; borrowed through French and Medieval Latin from the Latin family of decem, “ten.”
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
dime
The United States ten-cent coin, named with an older English and French word for a tenth part or tithe.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
034
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 2
resolvedestablishedexact word
Must decimate mean only kill one in ten?
No. That was its earliest English historical sense, but drastic reduction and destruction have been established since the seventeenth century.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Is the Roman tenth-member story invented?
No. The Latin and historical punishment sense is real; the error is using etymology to ban later English meanings.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 157GRADE Aexact ranked word
The one-in-ten origin is real—and the usage scold is still wrong.
English began with the tenth-member punishment sense, then broadened the word within decades. Etymology records change; it does not veto it.
RANK 140GRADE Aranked reveal
A dime is literally a tenth.
The coin name reuses a medieval tenth-part word from Anglo-French and Latin decima. It sits in the same deep numeral family as decimal, decimate, December, and inherited English ten.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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