Some of you guys should start an anti-idiom club or something similar. A lot of these points seem overly pedantic. Many phrases are so widely used that, regardless of the fact that they don't actually make sense, will still be understood by most. Certainly among fluent speakers. Complaints about people actually misusing words are one thinkg, but about people using widely accepted phrases? Personally, I think these nonsensical phrases actually improve a language. So what if it is illogical? Does it make sense that I can be told to "Hold my horses" rather than to "be patient". Do I, in this hypothetical situation, have any horses to hold? Almost certainly not. The language would be far less interesting without such phrases. We would all go around saying exactly what we meant, and what fun would that be?
Having said that I fin complains on the mis-use of words more legitimate than complaints of nonsensical idiom, I still think some complains here are also being pedantic.
For example, the point made about the word "decimate". The word originally meant to reduce something by 1/10th. However, it is commonly used today to mean destroyed, or at least to suffer a devastating loss. In fact, it has been used that way for quite some time. The meaning of words changes over time, and I would argue that, with it being so widely used(in literature as well as daily life, and I have seen dictionaries mention it having a loose definition as simply "to reduce heavily" or something similar) to mean simply a large loss, that it being used to mean this is fair use, given that this is how people use it, and it is rarely used with it's original meaning in mind. I would say that the meaning of the word is changing, because of the way people use it. Just using a word outside of it's original meaning, or in a more commonly accepted manner than it's original meaning, can hardly be called "wrong". Or at least, not without irony
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