Regarding split infinitives, it’s my understanding that the reason you have to avoid them in Latin is because if you separate the parts, it ceases to be an infinitive. Whereas in English, moving the “to” away from the verb does not change the form of the verb.
Of course I never studied Latin, so I don’t really know.
Split infinitives in Latin? Never heard of such a thing. In Latin the infinitive is a single world, so how could it be split? Unless of course you divide it into two parts and stick another word in the middle, that would be bad.
Of course, John W. Kennedy might come along with his handy Latin grammar book and explain how a split infinitive is possible in Latin. 
Which reminds me, my post above was meant to be humorous (where I said “should I drop and give twenty?”), I should have put a smiley there. I misread John W. Kennedy’s post and didn’t realize that his grammar book specifically said that “virus” was a second declension noun. My latin dictionary only says “virus, noun, neutral”.
What’s the title of that grammar book John? I would like to get a copy. It sounds like it has good information that you won’t find in your average latin dictionary.
Quoth nemo1:
Except that they are using the plural of “datum”, even if they don’t realize it. A datum (literally, a “given”, which form still survives in proofs) is a piece of information. Several pieces of information, taken together, are data.
As for split infinitives, I would contend that they almost never appear in English, either. Consider the fragment “To boldly go where no man has gone before”: The common mistake is assuming that “go” is the verb. It’s not: The verb is “boldly go”, and “to boldly go” is the (unsplit) infinitive of that verb.
Ahem…, I am the guilty party when it comes to the 2nd declension nouning of virus. This was based on looking at the Latin dictionary entry for virus and noting that the dictionary provided the latin plural viri. My powers of logical deduction linked with my Latin grammar worked this one out.
Secondarily, John W Kennedy’s wild ass guess for the plural vira amusingly means woman (from which we get virago among others).
So in ancient times using JWK logic, we have if one: slime/poison, or if more than one : a woman 
Jezza
(Sigh!)
Unless your Latin dictionary is different from every other Latin dictionary in the world, it didn’t give “viri” as the plural of “virus”, but as the genetive singular.
No.
In the first place, there is no such word.
In the second place, the English word “virago” comes from the Latin word “virago”.
In the third place, I have never said more than that I don’t know (God! Why is it so difficult to get people to understand the concept of not having enough information to decide something?) whether the Latin plural of “virus” is “viri” (like other 2nd-declension nouns in -us), or “vira” (like other neuter 2nd-declension nouns), or simply nonexistent.
In the fourth place, “vira” doesn’t mean “woman”, but “viri” does mean “men”.
No it isn’t. “Go” is the verb, and “to … go” is a split infinitive.
However, the “rule” against splitting infinitives in English is, in C. S. Lewis’s fine phrase, “a Frenchified schoolroom superstition”.
It’s Herbert Charles Elmer’s “Latin Grammar”. I’ve had it for nearly 40 years, and it was used when I got it, so it’s probably a tad difficult to find, but I see there’s a copy available right now on http://www.alibris.com.
Double sigh!!
I suggest you have a look at the Lewis and Short Latin dictionary, a copy is available at Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, vĭra
If you check up on your non-existent word vira you will see that Lewis and Short have (obviously mistakenly made an entry of :
vira, ae, f. [vir], a woman: quae nunc femina, antiquitus vira vocabatur, Isid. Orig. 11, 2, 23.
(edited for purpose of clarification at the request of jezzaOZ)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 02-12-2001 at 11:22 PM]
I suggest you have a look at the Lewis and Short Latin dictionary, a copy is available at Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, vĭra
If you check up on your non-existent word vira you will see that Lewis and Short have (obviously mistakenly made an entry of :
vira, ae, f. [vir], a woman: quae nunc femina, antiquitus vira vocabatur, Isid. Orig. 11, 2, 23.
Jezza
(Please disregard my prior post. I wrongly attributed a JWK pearl of wisdom to me.)
If that is the only example, all it establishes is that someone once thought there was such a word. (That is, for those who have no Latin at all, that is what the “example” actually is; someone saying, without giving evidence, that there used to be a word “vira”.)
If you will look at the OED, you will find a whole appendix of English non-words that exist only because some old dictionary made a mistake and other dictionaries copied it. Absent further evidence, that’s what this one looks like to me.
Dear JWK - Please remember the immortal words of Gaius Julius Caesar :
Tamquam scopulum, sic fugias inauditum atque insolens verbum.
(Avoid a strange and unfamiliar word as you would a dangerous reef)
It may do you well in this discussion, and, as I understand, many others.
Examples? Publius Ovidius Naso
(Apologies for the slang, but it was the best I could find on short notice)
More examples ? Everyone who speaks (at least) Italian, Portugese and Polish uses the Latin word vira for woman.
Even more examples ? Here is a fourth century commentary discussing Latin words relating to women as compared to the Greek words. (I know JWK can understand all of this - sorry to others - basically it says “what we now call a woman, femina, was, in former times, called vira; as serva, maid-servant, from servus, famula, handmaid from famulus, so vira from vir” )
Thank you for the link John. I plan on ordering the book tomorrow. It will bring back memories of my high school days.
The word in Ovid is “viro”. You apparently got “vira” from http://patriot.net/~carey/afa/latinclub/quotes.htm, where it is a typo, as the English translation on the same webpage proves.
The fourth-century quotation you give is the same thing you gave in the first place. As before, I don’t accept the unsupported statement of a fourth-century author on archaic Latin; late Latin writers are notorious for their mistakes about etymology.
Neither of my Italian dictionaries lists “vira”, and I’ve never encountered the word in 20 years as a semi-pro opera singer. I have no reference for Portuguese, but I certainly have no intention of accepting a word in Polish as proof that a word existed in Latin.
Is a wooden stake through the heart sufficient to make the JWK* admit he is wrong, or is a silver bullet and crucifx required as well ?
(* JWK : a 21st Century netizen with a grammar book who doesn’t actually speak Latin seeks to discredit a (was) living Latin scholar of the 4th century living in Rome who not only talked Latin, breathed Latin and lived Latin, but was at least 17 centuries closer to realtity than JWK)
– except, of course, that he is talking about Latin some seven hundred years before his own time (before, in his own words, the word “femina” was used for “woman”).
Modern scholars know a hell of a lot more about Latin of that era than than he did, just as modern scholars know a hell of a lot more about Old English than anyone in Shakespeare’s time did. And no-one in ancient times knew diddley-squat about scientific linguistics, and it shows in their wild guesses. The classic example is the fellow who decided that “lucus” (forest) derived from “non lucendus” (“it isn’t shining”). Which is about as dumb as believing that “forest” comes from “it’s a bad place FOR ESTimating things”.
It is entirely possible that he’s right and I’m wrong. But it smells of day-old fish, and I want proof.
jezzaOz sed:
Huh? I think you are making it up.
The Polish word for woman is kobieta. Polish is a Slavic language – it would be very unusual to use a Latin loan for such a basic language term.
Portuguese typically uses mulher, conjugate to Spanish mujer and certainly not derived from vira.
I don’t speak Italian, but I’ll bet you made that one up, too.
-m
Which is also presumably conjugate to the Latin “mulier” (spelling may be off; it’s been a while), which also means “woman”. As I understand it, the Latin “femina” is closer in meaning to the English “lady” rather than “woman”.
Gaelic uses a conjugate of the same word, as well, according to my mom, who puzzled a bit about whether she should go into the “fir” or “muller” restroom last time she was in Ireland.
“Mulier” is woman/wife/matron.
“Femina” is female/woman.
There wasn’t really a classical conception corresponding to the contemporary vaguely eulogistic use of “lady”. “Lady” in the more technical sense would be “domina”.
“Mulier” is another example of idiotic classical etymology. It was said to be derived from “mollis aer” – “tender air”. (This belief underlies the prophecy and its interpretation in Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”.)