Language shifts and evolves. The words we use today meant something quite different, in many cases, to the words our ancestors used. When the Roman army was victorious in battle they would line up their vanquished foes and kill every tenth person. The meaning of decimate has performed a remarkable one-eighty since then, and it would take a brave person to use the original meaning in modern times. But we can also hide behind such changes – an abomination was once anything that fell outside of Jewish law, so it was abomination to trim one’s forelocks; now . . .
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