Word changes...
All of the following is IMO, so YMMV. :->
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Anyone noticed how "weaponry" is used nowadays in places where "weapons" would work just fine (and is often more correct)?
Yes, they ARE interchangeable, sort-of, but it's clunky and sounds to me either slightly journo-pompous or like a failure to remember the right word so plugging the most similar one into its place.
ETA: I checked one of my dictionaries, and while "weapons" is more modern, "weaponry" is an obsolete word which has come back into favour. I wonder why...?
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"Decimate" turns up all the time, usually when the correct word is "devastate".
Merriam-Webster says: "It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why."
Beg to differ.
As the M-W article points out, "decimate" originally meant a Roman military punishment applied to one man in ten of a guilty unit. (Initially execution, but this had a rotten effect on unit morale, so it was reduced in severity to fatigues, extra drill or restricted rations.)
That's now considered a far too specific meaning and only linguistic pedants dig their heels in. Quite right too, and I speak here as a (bit of a) linguistic pedant...
However, it remains a useful word for more generalised incomplete destruction of living things - saying a regiment, flock, herd or population was "decimated" implies there are some survivors without quibbling over how many tenths. If totally wiped out, however, that's when words like "destroyed" or "obliterated" are more appropriate.
On the other hand something inanimate like a factory, city or region would be "devastated" - and in addition, saying someone is emotionally devastated is understandable, but saying they're emotionally decimated is peculiar.
Two words, several meanings.
It's like cutlery: a spork can replace knife, fork and spoon, but individual utensils give a lot more precision and variation of use.
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There are also a couple of real howlers, not just transposed words but actual errors.
One I've heard several times is using "siege" (a noun, or thing) instead of "besiege" (a verb, or action).
For reference, there's a term called noun-verbing, and the practice is quite old: "table the motion / pencil you in / butter him up / he tasks me", but all are either when there isn't already a verb-form of the word, or as a more picturesque way of saying something.
(Interesting side-note about "table the motion": in US English, it means "to postpone discussion" while in UK, CA and I think AU English, it means the complete opposite, "to begin discussion". Why there's this difference, I have no idea, but it's worth remembering as a Brit-fix when writing, also in a real-life business context.)
There IS an existing verb for the action of surrounding a castle and cutting it off from outside help, and that verb isn't "sieged". It's "besieged" or "under siege". Anywhere using "sieged" as a verb is wrong. The Firefox spellchecker in Tumblr Edit Mode is telling me it's wrong right now.
Merriam-Webster, I'm looking at you again.
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There's also "coronate" used as a verb. "The King was coronated at Westminster Abbey". Nope. He was CROWNED.
Coronate is an adjective (meaning crown-shaped) and was coined in in the 1600s by a botanist, as a word to describe the shape of certain plants.
The current Royal-associated usage seems to be a bastard back-formation from "coronation", because the act of putting on a crown is the verb "to crown".
This is almost identical in German, French, Italian and Spanish, with noun and verb the same. The only difference is that their verbs have, what a surprise, verb-endings (-en, -er, -re and -ar) on the noun while English does not.
Because English doesn't like to make things that easy...
"Coronated" might be people trying to sound archaic, or those who've bought into the dopey "said-is-dead" school, who perform any linguistic contortion to avoid common words, and who've been taught that repetition in a sentence - "crowned with a crown" - is BAD.
Is "coronated at a coronation" in some way better?
Guess what's got uncritical examples...
If that's M-W scholarship, I'll stick to the OED and my old but utterly reliable New Elizabethan Dictionary, thanks very much.
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Language is funny: sometimes funny ha-ha, sometimes funny annoying, but often just funny peculiar, because English etc. etc...
