April 3, 2003
A brief rant about the uses of a few words
I've recently heard Fox News reporters calling found weapons caches "arsenals". Guys, an "arsenal" is a place where weapons are manufactured (and sometimes designed); an "armory" is a place where weapons are simply stored.
While I'm ranting, I also noticed that one of Fox's talking head retired military analysts actually misused the term "decimate" to mean "annihilate". This is a somewhat understandable mistake, had it been committed by someone not schooled in the arts of war, but rather shocking on the part of a professional officer.
To those who don't understand my quibble, see this definition of "decimate". I disagree with this guy, by the way: I'm aware that words do change meanings over time, but "decimate" still retains the distinction of "to reduce (in force)". And yes, I'm aware of the arguments of Pinker against "language mavens" in his superb The Language Instinct and related works - I actually agree with most of them - but I'm annoyed at the degradation of language where caused by several generations of horrible government schooling.
(Bitch mode off)
Posted by Russell Whitaker at April 3, 2003 6:49 PM | TrackBack