Defending "decimate"

Eugene Volokh makes a good argument for giving a little leeway to the word decimate. As he says, "Etymology is interesting -- but it's not the same as meaning."

I tend to avoid decimate because, even though I know it is commonly used to mean "destroy a significant portion", my mind still gets stuck on the original meaning that meant to kill a tenth of a group of people. To keep my writing clear, I use a different word. But I do not condemn the way others most commonly use decimate. There are other writing bugbears that are more worthy of my contempt.

"Greedy Clerk" in the comments section of the above post illustrates two for me.

Further, one more pet peeve: there is nothing wrong with "splitting" infinitives. English is not Latin. An infinitive in English is generally two words: i.e., to be, not ser. Thus, they can obviously be split. Also, ending sentences with prepositions is not wrong -- sometimes it is awkward not to do so.

Amen.