On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 10:33, Steven W. Orr wrote: > On Wednesday, Aug 18th 2004 at 10:04 -0700, quoth Taylor, ForrestX: > > =>On Tue, 2004-08-17 at 13:52, Andrew Dietz wrote: > =>> Ok, here's my biggest pet peeve: > =>> > =>> The plural of CACTUS is CACTUSES, not CACTI, and the plural of > =>> VIRUS is VIRUSES, not VIRII. > => > =>My pet peeve is the improper spelling of Latin plurals ;o) > => > =>The Latin plural of VIRUS would be VIRI if it had one, certainly not > =>VIRII. Virus never had a plural in Latin because it a mass noun, not a > =>count noun. > => > =>cacti is an acceptable form of plural for cactus (in Latin and English). > > Wrong! The plural of virus is viruses. The word virus can be used as > either a mass noun as in "He has a rhyno-virus." which would imply that he > has a large number of individual virus particles infesting his body. The > alternate is that it is used to refer to individual virus particles at the > 20-30nm scale. Since the word is not derived from Latin, there is no > possibility of the word ending in the second declension nominative plural > "i" suffix to denote plural. The English plural ends in "es" for that > reason. Which part of my statement was wrong? Actually, I believe that the English word virus did come from Latin. Virus was a dangerous or disgusting substance. Forrest
