A thread to fire haphazardly at the board

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Hello. I have recently been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and even more recently discovered this website. I have learned to some degree how to appear as a NT, but still struggle in many areas. I often find myself fixated on highly specific questions that few people seem to be able to answer concisely (the most recent was "Seriously, how do you pluralize 'octopus'?"). I suppose I don't really have that much else to say about myself, except maybe "Hi, everyone".

Welcome! I love your avatar!

Okay I'll take a guess (without cheating)... I'm going with 'octopuses'?

Hey Cradgerpus welcome.

octopi.

Thanks! It's a combination of my three favorite animals and also a flower.

As for "octopuses", that's mostly correct. Etymologically speaking, it's very difficult to tell how "octopus" is to be pluralized. The popular pluralization "octopi" likely comes from an assumption that "octopus" derives from Latin, which it does not. Not to mention, if "octopus" were a Latin word, it would be pluralized as "octopedes", not "octopi". The word "octopus" itself is actually an English word, coined by Linnaeus long after the death of ancient Greek and Latin. From this, we could assume that it would be pluralized as "octopuses", but Linnaeus pluralized it as "octopodes", which comes from the usual method of pluralizing the Greek suffix "-pus". In English, though, "octopuses" is more widely accepted pluralization by most etymologists.

So, basically, the correct pluralization of "octopus" is "not octopi".

...I'll show my age if I recall how my father would pluralize " stewardess " as " stewardi " , annoying my mother... !

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