Plural of virus
Encyclopedia
A number of English
words ending in -us replace the -us suffix with -i to form plurals. With English plural
s, this is irregular, but common. Some words that end in -us do not pluralize with -i. Sometimes this is due to their origin and sometimes due to habit (e.g. campus
, plural campuses, anus
, plural anuses). Conversely, the -us/-i inflection is sufficiently common in English that some words that have not historically been pluralized that way but seem to fit the pattern are given an -i ending. Sometimes this pattern becomes widely accepted (e.g. cactus, ubiquitously pluralized as cacti), and in other instances would sound unambiguously incorrect to a native speaker (e.g. *
ani versus anuses).
In between these two extremes are words that, despite not supporting a Latin plural on etymological grounds, are nonetheless widely pluralized with -i and as such are not immediately heard as incorrect by a substantial number of native speakers (e.g. octopi). The question of whether or not these alternative plural forms can be considered incorrect or not touches on the on-going prescriptivism
vs descriptivism debate in linguistics
and language education
.
. Briefly, a declension
is the way a noun changes to reflect facts about the object to which it refers (e.g., its gender or number) or the relationship that the noun has to other words in the sentence. Remnants of the Old English declension system can be seen in words like I, me, we, and us in modern English, as well as (more distantly) in the 's enclitic. In Latin, just as in many languages spoken today, a word having several forms is the rule rather than the exception. Most words indicate their declension (including their number
, i.e. whether they are singular or plural) using an affix
, much as we use 's today to indicate possession and (usually) -s to indicate plurality. Specifically, the nominative
singular form of second declension masculine nouns is marked with -us, and the nominative plural with -i. More at Latin grammar
.
Confusion arises because some Latin words ending in -us would not have pluralized with -i. Examples of regularly declined nouns include third declension neuters, such as opus, with the plural opera, and fourth declension masculine and feminine, such as sinus and tribus, with plurals sinūs and tribūs. Some idiosyncratic instances are bus, a curtailed form of omnibus, a dative plural, and ignoramus, a verb.
While the number of users employing these non-standard plural forms of virus was always a proportionally small percentage of the English-speaking population, the variation was notable because it coincided with the growth of the internet: a medium on which users of 'viri' were over-represented. 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. 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.
Nonetheless, the question of what the Latin plural of virus would have been turns out not to be straightforward, as no plural form is attested in extant Latin literature. Furthermore, its unusual status as a neuter noun ending in -us apparently not of Greek origin obscures its morphology, making guesses about how it should have been declined difficult.
(ios) meaning "venom" or "rust" and the Sanskrit
word visham meaning "toxic, poison".
Since vīrus in antiquity denoted something uncountable, it was a mass noun
. Mass nouns — such as air, rice, and helpfulness in English — pluralize only under special circumstances, hence the non-existence of plural forms in the texts.
It is unclear how a plural might have been formed under Latin grammar if the word had acquired a meaning requiring a plural form. In Latin vīrus is generally regarded as a neuter of the second declension
, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are so rare that there are no recorded plurals. Plural neuter nouns of other declensions always end in -a (in the nominative, accusative and vocative), but even if we were to apply this rule to vīrus, it would be conjecture to guess whether this should give us vīra, vīrua, or something else. There simply is no known plural for this word in Classical Latin.
In Neo-Latin, a plural form is necessary, in order to express the modern concept of ‘viruses’. Dictionaries such as Whitaker's Words therefore treat it as a second-declension noun with the following fairly ordinary forms:
There does exist a Latin word virī, meaning "men" (the plural of vir, a second declension masculine noun), but it has a short i in the first syllable. The difference in vowel quantity is reflected in the different pronunciations of the (Latin-derived) English words virile and viral.
The form vīriī is impossible as a plural of vīrus since we only find the ending -iī in the plural form of masculine and feminine words ending in -ius. For instance, radius is pluralized by removing -us, to isolate the stem radi, and then adding the plural suffix -ī. Thus the -iī ending of the resulting word radiī is not a suffix: it is simply the consequence of adding the actual suffix ī to a stem that has an i as its last letter. An example of this in English is adding the suffix ing to the word ski, resulting in skiing. Vīriī would be the plural form of the putative, nonexistent word vīrius.
As an indication of usage, viruses appears in the official Scrabble words list, but neither viri nor virii does. Similarly, the spellchecker built into the Mozilla Firefox
browser accepts viruses but neither viri nor virii.
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. 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 naive viruses is actually more appropriate. (See hypercorrection
.)
: octopuses [ˈɒktəpəsɪz], octopi [ˈɒktəpaɪ], and octopodes [ˌɒkˈtəʊpədiːz]. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.
The Oxford English Dictionary
lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is (Latinized) Ancient Greek
, from , gender masculine, whose plural is . If the word were native to Latin, it would be ('eight-foot') and the plural , analogous to and , as the plural form of ('foot') is . In modern Greek
, it is called , gender neuter, with plural form .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary and the Compact Oxford Dictionary list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus
has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage
states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order
Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
is similar to that of octopus; the word is etymologically Greek despite its Latinized ending, and so pluralizing it as if it were Latin (i.e. as platypi) is ill-considered. As with octopus, importing Greek morphology into English would have platypodes as the plural, but in practice this form is not well-attested. In scientific contexts biologists often use platypus as both the singular and plural form of the word, in the tradition of sheep or fish, but laypersons and scientists alike often use the simple English plural platypuses. There is no consensus on which of these two is correct, with different dictionaries making different recommendations.
), cactus
follows standard Latin rules for pluralization and becomes cacti, which has become the prevalent usage in English. Regardless, cactus is popularly used as both singular and plural, and is cited as both singular and plural. Cactuses is also an acceptable plural in English.
) and Elvii (as a plural for Elvis
imitators).
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
words ending in -us replace the -us suffix with -i to form plurals. With English plural
English plural
In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number —that is, singular or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns...
s, this is irregular, but common. Some words that end in -us do not pluralize with -i. Sometimes this is due to their origin and sometimes due to habit (e.g. campus
Campus
A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls and park-like settings...
, plural campuses, anus
Anus
The anus is an opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth. Its function is to control the expulsion of feces, unwanted semi-solid matter produced during digestion, which, depending on the type of animal, may be one or more of: matter which the animal cannot digest,...
, plural anuses). Conversely, the -us/-i inflection is sufficiently common in English that some words that have not historically been pluralized that way but seem to fit the pattern are given an -i ending. Sometimes this pattern becomes widely accepted (e.g. cactus, ubiquitously pluralized as cacti), and in other instances would sound unambiguously incorrect to a native speaker (e.g. *
*
* is a a typographic symbol which is called asterisk.* may also refer to:* "*", a song by M83 * "*", a song by Sadist from "Lego" * *, symbol for not out in cricket...
ani versus anuses).
In between these two extremes are words that, despite not supporting a Latin plural on etymological grounds, are nonetheless widely pluralized with -i and as such are not immediately heard as incorrect by a substantial number of native speakers (e.g. octopi). The question of whether or not these alternative plural forms can be considered incorrect or not touches on the on-going prescriptivism
Linguistic prescription
In linguistics, prescription denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct...
vs descriptivism debate in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and language education
Language education
Language education is the teaching and learning of a foreign or second language. Language education is a branch of applied linguistics.- Need for language education :...
.
History
The -us singular form with an -i plural comes from Latin. However, the morphology of Latin nouns is complex and not every Latin word ending in -us pluralized in -i. The ones that did largely were from the second declension masculineGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. Briefly, a declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
is the way a noun changes to reflect facts about the object to which it refers (e.g., its gender or number) or the relationship that the noun has to other words in the sentence. Remnants of the Old English declension system can be seen in words like I, me, we, and us in modern English, as well as (more distantly) in the 's enclitic. In Latin, just as in many languages spoken today, a word having several forms is the rule rather than the exception. Most words indicate their declension (including their number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, i.e. whether they are singular or plural) using an affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
, much as we use 's today to indicate possession and (usually) -s to indicate plurality. Specifically, the nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
singular form of second declension masculine nouns is marked with -us, and the nominative plural with -i. More at Latin grammar
Latin grammar
The grammar of Latin, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected; consequently, it allows for a large degree of flexibility in choosing word order...
.
Confusion arises because some Latin words ending in -us would not have pluralized with -i. Examples of regularly declined nouns include third declension neuters, such as opus, with the plural opera, and fourth declension masculine and feminine, such as sinus and tribus, with plurals sinūs and tribūs. Some idiosyncratic instances are bus, a curtailed form of omnibus, a dative plural, and ignoramus, a verb.
Virus
The English plural of virus is viruses. In most speaking communities this is non-controversial and speakers would not attempt to use the non-standard plural in -i. 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.While the number of users employing these non-standard plural forms of virus was always a proportionally small percentage of the English-speaking population, the variation was notable because it coincided with the growth of the internet: a medium on which users of 'viri' were over-represented. 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. 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.
Nonetheless, the question of what the Latin plural of virus would have been turns out not to be straightforward, as no plural form is attested in extant Latin literature. Furthermore, its unusual status as a neuter noun ending in -us apparently not of Greek origin obscures its morphology, making guesses about how it should have been declined difficult.
Mass noun in Latin
The Latin word vīrus (the ī indicates a long i) means "poison; venom", denoting the venom of a snake. This Latin word is probably related to the GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
(ios) meaning "venom" or "rust" and the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
word visham meaning "toxic, poison".
Since vīrus in antiquity denoted something uncountable, it was a mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
. Mass nouns — such as air, rice, and helpfulness in English — pluralize only under special circumstances, hence the non-existence of plural forms in the texts.
It is unclear how a plural might have been formed under Latin grammar if the word had acquired a meaning requiring a plural form. In Latin vīrus is generally regarded as a neuter of the second declension
Latin declension
Latin is an inflected language, and as such has nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and...
, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are so rare that there are no recorded plurals. Plural neuter nouns of other declensions always end in -a (in the nominative, accusative and vocative), but even if we were to apply this rule to vīrus, it would be conjecture to guess whether this should give us vīra, vīrua, or something else. There simply is no known plural for this word in Classical Latin.
In Neo-Latin, a plural form is necessary, in order to express the modern concept of ‘viruses’. Dictionaries such as Whitaker's Words therefore treat it as a second-declension noun with the following fairly ordinary forms:
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | vīrus | vīra |
| vocative | vīrus/vīre | vīra |
| accusative | vīrus | vīra |
| genitive | vīrī | vīrōrum |
| dative | vīrō | vīrīs |
| ablative | vīrō | vīrīs |
Treating vīrus as 2nd declension masculine
If vīrus were a masculine second declension term like alumnus, it would be correct to use vīrī as its plural. However, it is not a masculine second declension term, as was explained.There does exist a Latin word virī, meaning "men" (the plural of vir, a second declension masculine noun), but it has a short i in the first syllable. The difference in vowel quantity is reflected in the different pronunciations of the (Latin-derived) English words virile and viral.
The form vīriī is impossible as a plural of vīrus since we only find the ending -iī in the plural form of masculine and feminine words ending in -ius. For instance, radius is pluralized by removing -us, to isolate the stem radi, and then adding the plural suffix -ī. Thus the -iī ending of the resulting word radiī is not a suffix: it is simply the consequence of adding the actual suffix ī to a stem that has an i as its last letter. An example of this in English is adding the suffix ing to the word ski, resulting in skiing. Vīriī would be the plural form of the putative, nonexistent word vīrius.
Latin nouns in English
Even if the Latin plural were known, English speakers would not be obliged to use it. Examples of Latin loanwords into English which have regular English plurals in -(e)s include campus, bonus, anus and cancer. These stand beside counterexamples such as radius (radii) and alumnus (alumni). Still other words are commonly used with either one: corpus (corpora, or sometimes corpuses), formula (formulae in technical contexts, formulas in more everyday ones).As an indication of usage, viruses appears in the official Scrabble words list, but neither viri nor virii does. Similarly, the spellchecker built into the Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
browser accepts viruses but neither viri nor virii.
Use of the form virii
Usage of virii within Internet communities has met with some resistance, most notably by Tom Christiansen, a figure in the PerlPerl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
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. 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 naive viruses is actually more appropriate. (See hypercorrection
Hypercorrection
In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
.)
Biology
In life sciences, "viruses" generally refers to several distinct strains or species of virus. "Virus" is used in the original way as an uncountable mass noun, e.g. "a vial of virus". Individual, physical particles are called "virions" or simply "virus particles".Octopus
There are three plural forms of octopusOctopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...
: octopuses [ˈɒktəpəsɪz], octopi [ˈɒktəpaɪ], and octopodes [ˌɒkˈtəʊpədiːz]. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is (Latinized) Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, from , gender masculine, whose plural is . If the word were native to Latin, it would be ('eight-foot') and the plural , analogous to and , as the plural form of ('foot') is . In modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, it is called , gender neuter, with plural form .
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary and the Compact Oxford Dictionary list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus
British National Corpus
The British National Corpus is a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources. It was compiled as a general corpus in the field of corpus linguistics...
has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).
Fowler's Modern English Usage
Fowler's Modern English Usage
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , by Henry Watson Fowler , is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing...
states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.
The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order
Taxonomic order
Taxonomic sequence is a sequence followed in listing of taxa which aids ease of use and roughly reflects the evolutionary relationships among the taxa...
Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.
Platypus
The situation with the word platypusPlatypus
The platypus is a semi-aquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young...
is similar to that of octopus; the word is etymologically Greek despite its Latinized ending, and so pluralizing it as if it were Latin (i.e. as platypi) is ill-considered. As with octopus, importing Greek morphology into English would have platypodes as the plural, but in practice this form is not well-attested. In scientific contexts biologists often use platypus as both the singular and plural form of the word, in the tradition of sheep or fish, but laypersons and scientists alike often use the simple English plural platypuses. There is no consensus on which of these two is correct, with different dictionaries making different recommendations.
Botanical Latin
As a word in Botanical Latin (as distinct from Classical LatinClassical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
), cactus
Cactus
A cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae. Their distinctive appearance is a result of adaptations to conserve water in dry and/or hot environments. In most species, the stem has evolved to become photosynthetic and succulent, while the leaves have evolved into spines...
follows standard Latin rules for pluralization and becomes cacti, which has become the prevalent usage in English. Regardless, cactus is popularly used as both singular and plural, and is cited as both singular and plural. Cactuses is also an acceptable plural in English.
Facetious formations
Facetious mock-erudite plurals in -i or even -ii are sometimes found for words ending with a sound (vaguely) similar to -us. Examples are stewardi (supposed plural of stewardessFlight attendant
Flight attendants or cabin crew are members of an aircrew employed by airlines primarily to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers aboard commercial flights, on select business jet aircraft, and on some military aircraft.-History:The role of a flight attendant derives from that of similar...
) and Elvii (as a plural for Elvis
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
imitators).