These days, the plural form octopuses has taken the lead, although octopi survives in casual contexts and octopodes still appears in formal contexts. In this condition of affairs, we are glad to know that a few resolute people have begun to talk about Octopods” - The Bradford Observer, 1873 “Some daring spirits with little Latin and less Greek, rushed upon octopi as for octopuses, a man would as soon think of swallowing one of the animals thus described as pronounce such a word at a respectable tea-table. The plural form octopuses (or octopusses) is also widespread ( Macon Telegraph, 1880), despite the fact that some observers have found it unrefined, and promoted octopodes (or octopods), based on the original Greek plural oktōpodes: A third-declension Latin term like octopus would, however, call for an entirely different kind of pluralization (like the change from corpus to corpora). The form octopi (or octopii) is well attested ( Penny Magazine for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1834), but it represents what sociolinguists call “hypercorrection”: Octopi is an attempt to apply grammatical rules where they don’t belong-based, in this case, on the mistaken assumption that octopus is a second-declension Latin word like fungus, in need of a plural form like fungi.
#Rhinoceros plural form how to#
Over time though, the less specific term polypus became associated more exclusively with the tentacled sea creatures still called polyps today.Īlthough the octopus is a relatively solitary creature, the question of how to pluralize its name eventually arose, spreading its own little flood of confusing ink. For a while, the word was treated as synonymous with polypus (“many-footed”), and the two words first appear in print together ( Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1759). Octopus came into English with the help of the scientific Latin name octopus, derived from the Byzantine Greek name for the animal ( oktōpous) and thereby the ancient Greek adjective oktōpous (“eight-footed”). It seems appropriate, then, that the word octopus is itself a confusing and shape-shifting thing. It can also change shape and even colour dramatically. It can evade predators by emitting clouds of ink. The octopus is a slippery animal, in every sense of the word. This Word Stories instalment looks at what can happen when this profusion of Greek and Latin roots gets tangled up in English, for example in the popular temptation to use Latin endings for words that look Latin, like octopus. Greek and Latin have shaped about half the words English speakers use today, including almost all of our technical and scientific terminology. It’s been a long time since English-speaking children learned Greek and Latin in school, but the effects of traditional “Western” classical education are still all around us. imbecile.Modern English is the result of a grand linguistic experiment in creative packaging, in that the roots of its grammar are characteristically Germanic, but its vocabulary is dominated by the classical heritage of Greece and Rome.
2007), an Urdu poet from Hyderabad, India. ”Pagal” (poem), written in Nepali in 1939 by Laxmi Prasad Devkota. Since the word ‘pagal’ means mad, the most appropriate translation of this phrase will be mad of someone or madly in love with someone. Pagal (translated in English as “Crazy”) – A poem by Laxmi Prasad Devkota. If something makes or drives you crazy, it makes you extremely annoyed or upset. pāgala/ crazy adjective after link verb. Governmental » Military - and more… Rate it: GOOD. In Middle English and early Early Modern English, it was used as a both informal second-person plural and formal honorific, to address a group of equals or superiors or a single superior. Ye (/jiː/) is a second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in Old English as “ge”. Youth Enterprise Scheme Business » General Business Youth Employment Summit Community » Conferences
#Rhinoceros plural form software#
Yamaha Education Suite Computing » Software Youth Educational Services Community » Educational Youth Employment Services Community - and more… The better plural for the noun is yeses because, like … This word has two possible plurals: yeses and yesses. Plural rhinoceroses also rhinoceros or rhinoceri\ rī-ˈnä-sə-ˌrī, rə- \ While “octopi” has become popular in modern usage, it’s wrong.
As the Merriam-Webster dictionary points out, people use three different terms, however: octopi, octopuses, and octopodes. Grammatically speaking, the plural for octopus is octopuses.
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