On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:51:55 +0100, Markus Stumpf observed:
I don't know if I am a "k00l VXdudez", but I had 5 years of Latin in
school and the correct plural of "virus" is "viri" (not "viruses" and
in no way "virii" ;-). The plural form was very rarely used in written
text, so some people say is doesn't have one in Latin, which is wrong.
Disclosure: I had only four years of high school Latin, and I was bad at it.
Caveat lector.
"Virus" is, in fact, derived from the Latin "virus", meaning "poison" (and
some similar unpleasant substances). It appears to be in the same declension
as "radius", where the nominative singular takes the "us" inflection, and the
plural takes an "i" inflection. Thus, the Latin plural of "virus" would be
"viri", just as "radius" becomes "radii" (the "i" being doubled there because
it was also present in the singular).
As to why we've abandoned the Latinate plural in English in favour of
"viruses", I don't know. ("Radiuses" is also a common plural variant for
"radius", I note.) Perhaps it could be blamed on the fact that we've adopted
a fairly specific meaning for "virus" in English which is not the same as its
Latin meaning, so the word has been co-opted rather than incorporated. The
term "virus" was adopted in the first instance because researchers thought
they had found a new form of fluid toxin, which later turned out to be a
misconception. [http://library.thinkquest.org/23054/basics/page3.html
(Warning: site appears to have annoying referer URL behaviour preventing
direct linking, so additional navigation may be necessary.)]
Language is weird.
We now return you to your regular ASRG arguments.
Regards,
TFBW
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