Octopuses?

[Motog]

*Originally posted by Sampiro *
**Hijack, but the history of “aluminum” and “aluminium” is an interesting lesson in how English is made. (“Aluminum” is correct, incidentally; the “ium” ending was a bit of Oxbridge pretension in the 1820s.) **

Cite please.

WorldWide Words Gives a different story, stating that confusion arose because the discoverer of the metal (Sir Humphry Davy) took a while to settle on his preferred spelling:

Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in -ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy

TheWord Detective supports this by stating:

In the case of “aluminum” (as I will spell it because this is, after all, my column), we can pin the whole mess on Sir Humphry Davy, the English chemist who discovered the stuff back in 1807. Indulging in the perversity of which historical figures seem fond, Davy named his discovery not “aluminum,” nor even “aluminium,” but “alumium,” basing the term on the Latin “alumen,” meaning “alum,” a substance drawn from the same mineral that had been used since ancient times for dyeing hides and the like. This is all a bit confusing, but we can take comfort in the fact that Davy was apparently a bit befuddled too. Around 1812 he decided that the proper name of his discovery was not “alumium,” but actually “aluminum.” Almost immediately Davy was besieged by other scientists who pointed out that if Davy would just add an “i” to make the term “aluminium,” it would fall into line with such other substance names as “sodium” and “calcium” and, in their words, “sound more classical.” So Davy named it yet again, this time to “aluminium,” and the “ium” form became standard in both the U.S. and Great Britain.

Unfortunately, many people in the U.S. had evidently stopped listening by that point and continued to call the stuff “aluminum,” and this spelling became so widespread that it was eventually adopted as the standard in the U.S. “Aluminium,” however, is the official spelling used by international chemical societies.

[CalMeacham]

1. In Latin, masculine nouns that end in “us” are made plural by replacing the “us” with “i.”

No, only with regular first declension nouns. As I noted above, irregular ones, like “opus” have irregular plurals (“opera”). “Octopus” is one of the irregular ones. But most folks haven’t studied Latin.

[Chronos]

So, the proper plural should NOT be “hippopotami,” but “hippopotamuses.”

No, no, no… Don’t be silly. The plural of “hippopotamus” is “hippos”.

[levdrakon]

*Originally posted by CalMeacham *
**No, only with regular first declension nouns. As I noted above, irregular ones, like “opus” have irregular plurals (“opera”). “Octopus” is one of the irregular ones. But most folks haven’t studied Latin. **

Wait, so Octopus is Latin or Greek?

I just told my best friend & wordmistress about this and she was appalled. So what about cactus & fungus? Are these Greek or Latin, & should we pluralize them the english way or the Greek/Latin way?

[pulykamell]

Well, ultimately it’s Greek (octopous). But most immediately it comes from New Latin, as a genus name.

Now, Cal, I’ve never studied Latin, so let me tell you what I’ve been able to figure out on the net:

Apparently, “octopi” would be the correct Latin pluralization. “Octopodes” is not an irregular Latin third declension, but rather the proper Greek pluralization.

Since the word derives from Greek we should use the Greek plural. Most prescriptivists out there seem to shun the Latin pluralization. However, it also seems that most of our language mavens also shun the pedantic Greek plural, in favor of “Octopuses.” In fact, Fowler considers this to be the only acceptable plural in English for “octopus.”

I say pluralize in English. Same with cactus and fungus. The only problem I can see with the English pluralization of these words is the some may find the last two syllables awkward ("-uses") to the simpler “-i.”