I just used wordnik for the first time to see other uses for the word "actionable." Now that is a useful site!

I have never heard decimate used in the traditional sense

They did it right on Dr. Who, bless them. I first learnt it in the traditional sense, and it was a while before I heard it used conventionally and wrong.

As for the samurai sword--there aren't that many of them around that are that sharp--most would be replicas. I don't know if mine would take that good an edge. My blades that would get that sharp are shorter and are probably ill-suited for swinging at an extremity. More something you'd lodge in someone's clavicle.

I have been idly looking for a sword-sharpener for ages. I thought I'd found one, but he moved out of state. I should have gotten them all done when I had the disposable income, dammit. I just never looked seriously enough. It's not like it's a hard search.

Special K:

why are we so keen to retain archaic meanings when the new ones are so useful?

Decimate ain't one of those. Devastate works just fine. One might not mean decimate often, but when you do, how many other words work as well?

Dear lord, I still seem to be watching 90210. And Melrose Place. Which seems to have a murderer. And a whore. And an art thief. It's total crack, even compared to the original.

I could probably rephrase:

why are we so keen to retain archaic meanings when they are so useless?

I always cringe when people use decimate instead of devastate, but I fully admit that that's just priggishness on my part, because I'm smart enough to have been told the difference at some point. Stephen Fry talked me out of it in a podcast last year.

Damn it, ita beat me to Doctor Who. The Master may be nuts, but he's precise.

I'm smart enough to have been told the difference at some point

You don't have to be smart to have been told the difference. You don't even have to be that smart to remember the difference. I just don't get why we need to lose a word. And break a perfectly sensible etymology by inserting "and then, at some point, everyone just got stupid and started using it wrong." It's got "deci" right in there.

I think actionable has a precise legal meaning, not sure I know of it in other contexts.

Oh it absolutely does. And 90% of the time I see it used to mean "things we can/should take action on" as opposed to "things we did that could get us sued." As in: "we will provide actionable recommendations."

Yeah, not really what you're going for there champ, but nice try.

I prefer the Imperial Roman version of decimation. [Link] (warning: Wikipedia, though it mirrors what I was taught in college)

The word lost itself! I think devastate is better usage, but I won't correct someone who uses decimate as a synonym. I think we remember what it means because of its obvious etymology, but that doesn't make it worthy of conservation.

I'd like to point out if you were the one in ten Roman legionnaires killed it was still devastating.