A fourth form octopods is occasionally used by scientists for taxonomic purposes. There are three plural forms of octopus: octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. Individual, physical particles are called " virions" or "virus particles". "Virus" is used in the original way as an uncountable mass noun, e.g. In life sciences, "viruses" generally refers to several distinct strains or species of virus. The form viruses appears in the official Scrabble words list, but neither viri nor virii does. In other words, virii is a hypercorrection. The impetus of this discussion was the potential irony that the use of virii could be construed as a claim of superior knowledge of language when in fact more detailed research finds the native viruses is actually more appropriate. Usage of virii within Internet communities has met with some resistance, most notably by Tom Christiansen, a figure in the Perl community, who researched the issue and wrote what eventually became referred to in various online discussions as the authoritative essay on the subject, favoring viruses instead of virii. In Neo-Latin, a plural form is necessary in order to express the modern concept of 'viruses', leading to the following declension: ![]() (One rare attested plural, pelage as a plural of pelagus, is borrowed from Greek, so does not give guidance for virus.) Plural neuter nouns of other declensions always end in -a (in the nominative, accusative and vocative). ![]() The Latin word vīrus was a neuter noun of the second declension, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are rare enough that inferring rules is difficult. These pluralize only under special circumstances, and no plural form of the word can be found in contemporary texts. Vīrus in Classical Latin was a mass noun, denoting something uncountable. A tendency towards prescriptivism in the computer enthusiast community, combined with the growing awareness that viri and virii are not etymologically supported plural forms, also played a part. As the distribution of Internet users shifted to be more representative of the population as a whole during the 2000s, the non-standard forms saw decline in usage. While the number of users employing these non-standard plural forms of virus was always a small percentage of the English-speaking population, the variation was notable because it coincided with the growth of the web, a medium on which users of viri were over-represented. Viri is also found in some nineteenth-century sources. However, in computer enthusiast circles in the late 20th century and early 21st, the non-standard viri form (sometimes even virii) was well attested, generally in the context of computer viruses. ![]() In most speaking communities, this is non-controversial and speakers would not attempt to use the non-standard plural in - i. However, the form syllabi is used and considered acceptable by some sources. Syllabus is a Late Latin (16th c.) word, derived from a misreading of the Greek sittybos "table of contents" since it is not a classical word, some argue that it does not have a classical plural. For example, bus is a shortened form of omnibus 'for everyone', the ablative (and dative) plural of omnis, and ignoramus is a verb form, 'we do not know'. Some English words derive from Latin idiosyncratically. For example, third declension neuter nouns such as opus and corpus have plurals opera and corpora, and fourth declension masculine and feminine nouns such as sinus and tribus have plurals sinūs and tribūs. However, some Latin nouns ending in -us are not second declension ( cf. In Latin, most second declension masculine nouns ending in -us form their plural in -i. Still others may use either: corpus ( corpora or corpuses), formula ( formulae in technical contexts, formulas otherwise), index ( indices mostly in technical contexts, indexes otherwise). ![]() Some English words of Latin origin do not commonly take the Latin plural, but rather the regular English plurals in -(e)s: campus, bonus, and anus while others regularly use the Latin forms: radius ( radii) and alumnus ( alumni). Prescriptivists consider these forms incorrect, but descriptivists may simply describe them as a natural evolution of language. Conversely, some non-Latin words ending in -us and Latin words that did not have their Latin plurals with -i form their English plurals with -i, e.g., octopi is sometimes used as a plural for octopus (the standard English plural is octopuses). There are many exceptions, some because the word does not derive from Latin, and others due to custom ( e.g., campus, plural campuses). In English, the plural form of words ending in -us, especially those derived from Latin, often replaces -us with -i.
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