Call it the Buzz Feed Effect.  Lists are everywhere on the Web: best books of September, worst movies of the summer, you name it.  Then there are lists that rank the Star Wars movies from best to worst, or the other way around, not that it matters.

But all this does keep newspaper columnists like Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post busy when they’ve run out of ideas.

She did a hot mess column about words she thinks are over-used and need to be retired, written in response to reports that the CDC is asking staff not to use terms like “science-based” in budget requests so as to avoid pissing off Republicans.

Words come in and out of fashion. Parker doesn’t like “optics,” but is there a better way to explain the Washington obsession with how things look while ignoring what they mean? Its use may fade, or not. Likewise with “drill down” and “re-purpose.” Nobody can predict their future.

Read books written ten, twenty, thirty years ago—or a hundred. The English language evolves whether we like it or not. Some words die out because they’re just momentarily hip, some stick with us because they’re useful. Dictionary writer Samuel Johnson hated the word “mob” but he was wrong. It filled a linguistic, cultural need.

Parker crosses a line from personal dislikes to factual incorrectness. She claims that you can’t use “decimate” when you mean “devastate.”

We’re a very long way from the Roman Empire where decimate specifically meant to kill one out of every ten. And it meant that in Latin, of course. Like other Latin words (actor, century, missile) it’s changed its meaning. People need to catch up and chill out.

Who uses the word “decimate” that way now in English, or moans about its supposed misuse except for word snobs? It’s a perfectly good synonym for devastate, destroy, annihilate, crush, etc.

If you want to complain about something important, something that affects the nation in major ways, how about exposing the steep learning curve when you buy an Instant Pot?

Lev Raphael is the author of twenty-five books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon.  He teaches creative writing online at writewithoutborders.com.