Thanksgiving

Merriam-Webster's "Word Histories" (1991): decimate Any Roman soldiers who pondered mutiny had good reason to think twice. A technique used in the Roman army to keep mutinous units in line was to select one-tenth of the men by lot and execute them, thereby encouraging the remaining nine-tenths to follow orders. The Latin verb for this presumably effective form of punishment was decimare, literally, 'to take a tenth of', which was derived from decimus, 'tenth', from decem, 'ten'. Screeve "tithe" "See DECIMATE" is also from the word, a part of one's livelihood given to one's religion or church. I read in Germany it's being automatically taken out of income tax returns. With the current administration's palsy-walsy with the beheadenest countries in the world (Britain in the past and Saudi Arabia in the present) will the future behead Darwin, bring back the lions around the Tower of London, and make parts of speech in foreign countries "evidence" for such "capital punishment"?