From: Alper Çugun (alper@dds.nl)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 01:08:22 MDT
Quoting Damien Broderick <damienb@unimelb.edu.au>:
> To make a plural from a word ending with the suffix -us, take it off
> and add the suffix -i to the stem.
You're right that the plural should be viruses but this bit about Latin
plurals is incorrect.
From: http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
"Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write
*viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule.
This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change
the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to
corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like
syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus."
Happy Latin to you,
-- Alper Çugun +31 - (0)6 - 24 55 33 06
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