etymology-2
Explanation
The Joke
A person is narrating: "Sometimes I learn an etymology fun fact and realize it could get me killed." The scene shows a group of people standing in front of what appears to be a devastated village or massacre site, with smoke rising and bodies visible. One person in the group says: "Okay, but strictly speaking, this population wasn't 'decimated' by war, because that implies only a 10% rate of death."
The Humor
The joke plays on the well-known etymological pedantry around the word "decimate." The word originally comes from the Latin "decimare," a Roman military punishment where one in every ten soldiers was killed. Etymology enthusiasts love to point out that "decimate" technically means to destroy only 10%, not to completely annihilate (its common modern usage). The comic takes this annoying-but-harmless bit of linguistic pedantry and places it in the worst possible context: standing in front of an actual scene of mass death and destruction, correcting the terminology used to describe it. The narrator's opening — "it could get me killed" — foreshadows that this kind of tone-deaf correction in the face of real tragedy would understandably make the other people present want to harm the speaker. The humor is in the complete lack of social awareness and misplaced priorities of someone who cares more about etymological accuracy than human suffering.
Context
The "decimate doesn't mean what you think it means" factoid is one of the most common pieces of etymological trivia shared online and in conversation, often to the annoyance of others. The Latin origin refers to the Roman practice of "decimatio," where units that mutinied or showed cowardice were punished by killing every tenth soldier, selected by lot. SMBC frequently satirizes pedantry and the social costs of being technically correct.