[HPFGU-OTChatter] Plurals!

[Amanda Lewanski]

Slytherin_Daughter at yahoo.com wrote:

> People! It's *octopi*! *Octopi*! The multiple of "octopus"
> is "octopi", not "octopuses". Just like "cacti", not "cactuses",
> "hippopotomi", not "hippopotomuses", etc, etc, etc. Why is this so
> hard to grasp?

Because (a) either is correct, and (b) the reason that either is correct
is that most speakers of English are these days ignorant of the
linguistic origins of some words, and/or do not know how the plurals are
formed in the original language, and so ignore it and form plurals in
the way English does. Oh, and (c) to drive linguistic nit-pickers like
yourself (and me) nuts [don't even get me started on the now-acceptable
mispronunciation of 'harassment' as HAIR-assment, which sounds to me
like a medical condition treatable with a depilatory....]

--Amanda, proud speaker of plurals such as "kleenices"....oh, and Emily,
my dear, if you say "phoenixes," too, instead of "phoenices," you're
calling the kettle black (although it can be argued that there *was* no
word for more than one phoenix, because there *was* only one phoenix, so
we're free to make the plural any way we want...)
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