Timeline for When a word has both English and 'Latin' plurals, which style should I use?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
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| Jul 2, 2019 at 14:44 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @EdwinAshworth: I don't know how one can be sure without looking it up in a reliable source, then. A good dictionary should mention it when giving a malformed plural, so that writers may make their choice based on all the available information. I personally would never use a (recently formed) improper plural, if only because of how jarring it looks, but I can't control the style of others. | |
| Jul 2, 2019 at 14:34 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Cerberus How can one be sure? What started as an erroneous use may now have been accepted into the lexis. Firefly / starfish / strawberry / peanut / Guinea pig / French fries.... and I'm sure mistakes have been made in the use of normal calque-assimilation. The fact is, words with suspect histories are accepted into the lexis. M-W has: Pluralization [of] octopus, which, depending on which dictionary is consulted, may be written in three different ways: octopi, octopuses, and octopodes. | |
| Jul 2, 2019 at 14:23 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Octopi is definitely preferable to octopodes. | |
| Jan 25, 2014 at 18:32 | comment | added | einpoklum | Well, if people start using the right plurals then eventually nobody will get it wrong because they'll know for certain what the right form is. | |
| Apr 16, 2011 at 22:52 | comment | added | gpr | @Malvolio - rather annoyingly, the online Oxford doesn't back me up either, although this Wikipedia article quotes from it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Terminology. Maybe it's only used by classicists, pedants, and psephologists :( | |
| Apr 15, 2011 at 2:00 | comment | added | Michael Lorton | @gpr -- I've never heard "a referenda" and my dictionary doesn't back you up. Do you have a cite? @arnholt -- how do you expect people to get it right without practice ? | |
| Jan 21, 2011 at 13:20 | comment | added | gpr | You should also be aware of unusual modern usages, e.g. although referenda is the appropriate plural of referendum in Latin, referendums is the preferable plural in English since a referenda is a plebiscite on a number of issues (whereas a referendum might be on only a single issue). | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 21:56 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | Absolutely right, you should be completely sure before even considering the Latin plural, see "octopus". That said, as another classicist, I try to squeeze in Latin plurals whenever they are not totally ridiculous. I think it might even be seen as "cute geekiness" if a classicist crosses that line. | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 16:37 | history | answered | arnsholt | CC BY-SA 2.5 |