jsdy@hadron.COM (Joseph S. D. Yao) (05/26/90)
I write: >swimmer@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Morton Swimmer) writes: >>Hey, what's up? I thought it was an established convention to speak of >>_viruses_ and not _virii_. > >"Virii" is what's known as a "pseudo-learned" form. ... I'm embarrassed. And "pseudo-learned." I was sure that I remembered that "slime, poison" was Latin "virus (long i), virus (long i & u)", in the fourth Latin declension of nouns. [The first form is nominative singular, the second is genitive singular, and determines which declen- sion the word is in.] This was partly because there already is a "vir, viri (long second i)" in the second declension. It turns out that the word "virus (long i)" is also in the second declension, confusingly enough. That means that the genitive singular, nominative plural, and accusative plural are all "viri (both long i's)". Confusing? I agree (I guess obviously). "Viri" is a valid Latin plural for "virus" (not "virii"). It doesn't quite sound right in English, though. I'll just vote for "viruses" and leave it at that. English is a living language. Things like the plural of "virus" will, ultimately, be determined by what people want to use and do use, not pedantry such as I've been playing with. ;-{ [Ed. Please see my note on this subject later in this digest.] Joe Yao jsdy@hadron.COM ( jsdy%hadron.COM@{uunet.UU.NET,decuac.DEC.COM} ) arc,arinc,att,avatar,blkcat,cos,decuac,\ dtix,ecogong,grebyn,inco,insight,kcwc, \ lepton,lsw,netex,netxcom,phw5,research, >!hadron!jsdy rlgvax,seismo,sms,smsdpg,sundc,telenet, / uunet / (Last I counted ...)