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What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
May 4, 2010 9:58 PM
Answers · 3
3
Other words ending in -us show a very varied pattern. Like octopi, the plural hippopotami is now generally taken to be either funny or absurdly pedantic, and the usual plural is hippopotamuses. Common usage appears to indicate a slight preference for termini rather than terminuses, but syllabuses rather than syllabi. Other usual forms include cacti and gladioli, and our files at the dictionary department show scarcely any examples of nucleuses or funguses. (Omnibi is simply a joke, and quite ungrammatical in Latin!)
Among words ending in -um it seems worth drawing attention to the word curricula, plural of curriculum, and warning against confusion with the adjective curricular (as in extra-curricular).
May 4, 2010
3
The plural form of octopus is octopuses (or occasionally octopodes). Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes.
May 4, 2010
octopus octopuses or octopi
hippopotamus hippopotamuses or hippopotami
syllabus syllabuses or syllabi
you could've looked them up in the dictionary
May 4, 2010
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