My readers, bless their hearts
If you read these posts only when they first show up — and by all means keep doing so — you miss the comments that people add as they go rummaging through the archive. I wish that you could enjoy them as much as I do. T
his just in today for Roberta, to a post from last September on decimate:
My favorite sentence that uses decimate in its literal etymological sense is "Tithing to the church has decimated my income." Yes, I'm probably going straight to hell.
Comments
Back when I worked for my college newspaper, I once called our sports editor to berate him for the sentence "Vici fared slightly better, going 2-3 in pool play before losing with a decimated team to the University of Minnesota on Sunday."
It turned out that our women's ultimate team (Vici) had indeed started the weekend with 10 people, but was forced to finish it with 9. In retrospect I wish I had called more attention to this extraordinarily precise writing.
Posted by: Dan | April 30, 2008 4:09 PM