this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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It would be neither. It would be appropriate.
Can you define the word redundant for me?
If it were phrased "they decimated the population" most would assume from the phrasing that it mean that you're saying that a large proportion was killed, because that's how that word is actually used in the English language. If it were phrased "they decimated 10 percent of the population" you're either using the word as people understand it wrong or your saying they killed 10 percent of the population twice right next to each other, which is you know, redundant.
The definition of words reflect how we use them. An interesting fact is that scientists use Latin for scientific names of things because no one speaks Latin so the meanings of those words will not change with time. It's the same in courts, you'll find that a lot of old English words that aren't commonly used in everyday conversation are used and that's so that the meaning of things stay consistent over time.
If you replace "wiped out" in the title of the OP with decimate then it'd be exactly as wasteful, would use the word as it's understood in modern English properly, and you'd get to use the original meaning too. Sure, it's redundant (sort of) but it doesn't take any extra time or space than what's already written.
Actually, after some further thought I've realised I was wrong actually. If you were to use the phrasing "decimated 10 percent of the population", it wouldn't be redundant it would just be straight up wrong. To decimate 10 percent of a population would mean either you killed 10 percent of 10 percent of the population (i.e. 1 percent), or it would mean you've killed a large proportion of that 10 percent of the population.
And of course my point about how using the phrase "decimating the population" on its own would lead to confusion for most people because when people think of "a large proportion of", people generally think that it's more than 10 percent.