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I have noticed that "orders of magnitude" is getting the same colloquial treatment that has long-since happened to "decimated". That is, a departure in common parlance from the technical meaning of the word to one used to communicate a general description of largeness.

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Sure, but the use of "decimated" is used approximately correctly in most cases, even if not precisely right. And it is a cool sounding word, and it's one word.

"Orders of magnitude" is three words when one would do, it's used to sound sophisticated, and it's use is off by... an order of magnitude or so... in many cases

Hmm... Sometimes decimated is used in ways that are colloquially understandable but actually make no sense at all. For example, "Sadly, my team got decimated in the playoffs". That doesn't even make sense. 1/10th of the team lost the game? What?

Think it's more like the worst thing that can happen to a Roman army unit happened to us.

For a long time I thought it meant to reduce to 1/10th not by 1/10th.

Yes. As a kid, hearing it used in like GI Joe or something, it always felt equivalent to “massacred”.

That and when people use "exponential" to mean big.

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