Why is "decimate" still linked to its number-specific definition when other similar words are not? [closed]

Actually, decimate isn't the only word linked to its number-related root. You will still find people who, for example, mentally connect hecatomb with the sacrifice of 100 oxen, myriad with the number 10,000, and millennarianism with 1000 years in Christian eschatology. I'm one of them.

To me, these connections don't provide a compelling reason to banish use of any of these terms in nonnumerical settings, but they do enrich my sense of where the words came from and perhaps hint at how they came to be applied in the situations in which they are commonly used today.

Ultimately, etymology doesn't provide a persuasive basis for denying the legitimacy of the way people use words today when it departs from the way people used them decades or centuries ago. But words do have a past, and getting annoyed when people bring up that past seems to me no more productive or sensible than getting annoyed about the fact that meanings evolve.