On Matters of Many Octop... what...?

[Ziz]

It obviously goes through ablaut like many English words.
Octopus > Octopates

Octopice?

Octopouse?

You would give your height as, for example, five foot six, or six foot seven.

In America here I seem to hear that construction almost exclusively; I'm not sure if that's what you were trying to say

Maybe it's that here (as opposed to in Scotland or the UK in general?), if height is expressed with whole or mixed numbers, rather than some number of feet plus some number of inches, it's mostly (or always for my dialect) the number + "feet." So where "five foot nine" is the preferred way of expressing 5'9'', you can only say "five and three quarter feet" or "(almost) six feet" if you're not explicitly specifying the number of inches.

[finlay]

uk in general, yeah. personally i'd prefer it if we switched to metres, though.

[Soap]

In another thread it was shown to me that 'polyp' is another word for octopus based on the Latin 'polypus' and the mistaking of that -us for the masculine singular ending. This mistaking also happened in the Romance languages. Thus 'octop' is just as good a word as any. The plural could be octops, though some people might think it refers to a scary sea monster with eight eyes.

[Yng]

The weird thing is, Wiktionary says it's hypercorrect and octopus is Latin in origin, coming from a made-up Greek word, but it links to aforesaid made-up Greek word, which seems to be an actual word, and the Latin entry for octopūs lists a Greek ὀκτώπούς.

[Shm Jay]

Even more pretentious are:

clitorides
glantes

and if there is a Greek plural for "clitoris" that is not "clitorides", that would be even more pretentious.

More pretentious still would be to use the declined forms, even if you are using them in the correct grammatical places: glantis, glanti, glantem, glante, glantum (or is it glantium?), glantibus.

[Xephyr]

Use of those terms isn't necessarily pretentious. Myself, and a couple others, in the little chat community we have here deliberately exaggerate and misuse neo-latin and neo-greek plurals like that all the time: clitorides, reflices, megaminces, XBuces, sourpodes, etc. It's not pretention-- it's an in-group lect.

[MisterBernie]

More pretentious still would be to use the declined forms, even if you are using them in the correct grammatical places

That's at least done in some forms of German with "Jesus Christus" and "Maria".

[faiuwle]

Use of those terms isn't necessarily pretentious. Myself, and a couple others, in the little chat community we have here deliberately exaggerate and misuse neo-latin and neo-greek plurals like that all the time: clitorides, reflices, megaminces, XBuces, sourpodes, etc. It's not pretention-- it's an in-group lect.

And then there's Macintoshen - why not play with irregular germanic plurals, too? I've got source code with variables named "prefices" and "suffices" (as the plurals of "prefix" and "suffix").

[Maharba]

Why bother with a special form anyway? Why not just "more than one octopus"? If that is still too problematic (it uses the word octopus!), you could just say "more than one animal of order Octopoda".

[finlay]

Because English has mandatory plural marking and knowing what form the plural takes is quite important.

[alice]

I once saw a picture of an octopus with each arm pointing to a different plural form, but I can't remember any of the other plurals.

And I saw an actual octopus yesterday, but he was under water and behind a thick glass or plastic screen, and so I couldn't reasonably ask him what his plural forms were. He was really horrible, too.

[Radius Solis]

Drydic has the right approach: the correctness of a word is specific to each language. The basic principle here is facts about other languages are not relevant to what constitutes correct English (and vice versa). The etymological history of the pluralization of "octopus" in its source languages is surely a worthy matter of discussion that I'm reading with interest. All I want to warn against is confusing "correct in Latin" (or Greek) for "correct in English", as some here may be doing.


(But I disagree with Drydic on which form to use in English: both "octopuses" and "octopi" have such broad acceptance that neither can be called incorrect.)

[Herr Dunkel]

Say Eightfoot and Eightfoots and you've solved the problem

[finlay]

No you haven't. Why isn't it Eightfeet??

[Astraios]

"Proudfeet!"

Actually, that's like my last name. xD It's Bellman, but when we're referring to all of us we say "the Bellmen", not "the Bellmans". Other people who aren't in our family have used "the Bellmans" though.

[Neon Fox]

No you haven't. Why isn't it Eightfeet??

For the same reason that the correct plural of the computer peripheral is "mouses", not "mice".

[Skomakar'n]

No you haven't. Why isn't it Eightfeet??

For the same reason that the correct plural of the computer peripheral is "mouses", not "mice".

Really? I'm fairly sure that I've only ever seen 'mice'...

[finlay]

No you haven't. Why isn't it Eightfeet??

For the same reason that the correct plural of the computer peripheral is "mouses", not "mice".

This is the place where usage trumps any kind of theory you can throw at it (because the theory can only be backed up by usage). It's "mice".

I know what you're getting at, exocentric compounds and all that. And it is generally and often a rule, but it doesn't apply uniformly.

[Ser]

Use of those terms isn't necessarily pretentious. Myself, and a couple others, in the little chat community we have here deliberately exaggerate and misuse neo-latin and neo-greek plurals like that all the time: clitorides, reflices, megaminces, XBuces, sourpodes, etc. It's not pretention-- it's an in-group lect.

Board index » Forums, or if you prefer, Fora » Languages & Linguistics

[Kereb]

For the same reason that the correct plural of the computer peripheral is "mouses", not "mice".

This is the place where usage trumps any kind of theory you can throw at it (because the theory can only be backed up by usage). It's "mice"

"mice" is the ONLY form I've seen in computer stores or catalogues
bam .

[Echobeats]

1. Wiktionary is not a proper source.

2. Wiktionary contradicts itself within the same article.

The plural octopodes is hypercorrect, being a backformation from the Latin of an imagined Greek ὀκτώπους (oktōpous), plural ὀκτώποδες (oktōpodes). However, the word is actually Latin in origin, and in Latin was often treated as second declension octōpus (much as pōlypus was, in both Latin and Greek), with the regular second-declension plural form octōpi. This is mistakenly often thought to be a modern error.

From Ancient Greek ὀκτώποδες (oktōpodes, “eight feet”).

3. "Octopi" is a little bit pretentious and a big bit wrong. "Octopodes" is correct but extremely pretentious. "Octopuses" is therefore the best option, as it's also correct and not at all pretentious.

If this were some kind of international summit at which we had to agree on a plural of "octopus" that's acceptable to everybody, I'd be very tempted to just say it should be "octopus", in line with other animals such as deer, sheep, fish, and several particular kinds of fish such as salmon. Thus:

Our zoo has five sheep, four deer, twelve salmon and three octopus.

[Skomakar'n]

"Octopuses" is therefore the best option, as it's also correct and not at all pretentious.

Still sounds like baby talk to me...

[Astraios]

Still sounds like baby talk to me...

You're not a native speaker, you don't count.

I've only ever heard "octopus" as the singular and plural in documentaries, BTW.

[Skomakar'n]

Still sounds like baby talk to me...

You're not a native speaker, you don't count.

I know, I know. It's just the impression that I've gotten.

[Shm Jay]

So what's the Swedish plural?