Looking for a more academic word for the opposite of "hostile".

You know those words where the pronunciation makes sense, but the spelling feels unnecessarily complicated?

If you could redesign the spelling of one English word, which one would you fix?

Has anyone here noticed an uptick in the use of the word "decimating" used to mean "totally annihilating"? I see that the widespread modern use is close to this. I always learned growing up that it meant reducing the number of something by 1/10th. Every time I hear that we are decimating a species or an ecosystem, my brain immediately goes "Oh that's not that bad" when yeah, it really is.

what would be next step of this natural progression?