Re: Grammaticaly correct sentences (or not...)

"Paul" <paulmathewmac@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:b3aa5ef0-87ad-4af2-9213-e5702f613ed7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I had used 'decimate' in the figurative sense to mean 'to rip apart',
> 'to destroy' or 'to severely criticise'. Is this objected to?

OED (2nd Ed.) gives four meanings, the first two (to do with taxation)
being 
obsolete. That leaves:

3. Milit. To select by lot and put to death one in every ten of (a body of

soldiers guilty of mutiny or other crime): a practice in the ancient Roman

army, sometimes followed in later times.

4. transf.    a. To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of.    b. 
rhetorically or loosely. To destroy or remove a large pro****tion of; to 
subject to severe loss, slaughter, or mortality.

Note that 4b is 'loose'. None of the illustrative quotations given
suggests 
that the victims numbered more than one in ten.

So, by this pedant (who would also object to your unnecessarily split 
infinitive), yes.
-- 
Noel