That the proper plural of spider is octopi?
I always thought the plural should be “penois.”
That’s from one of las demas lenguas españolas, right? 
According to an ex-girlfriend, the plural of spider is “Eeeeeeeek!!!”
I think the point is now is that it is an English word, no matter what its roots. So its plural is whatever the English people decide it is. It Greek the plural ending might be -ode, the Latin plural may be -i, it doesn’t matter. It is what the English plural is now.
Oh and what’s the plural of anus?
Actually, the name she gave was the Spanish word. I don’t remember what the Galego word for “pulpo” is or I’d tell you the native name for it.
One goof. A group of geef.
“Bring me an octopus, an while you’re at it, bring me another.” The classic response. Although I don’t think it works as wel with “penis.”
I made the mistake of using “octopi” in the presence of a professor I was getting information from for my book. He promptly told me it wasn’t a word, and reached over and pulled down the appropriate volume of the OED (Of course he had a copy of the complete OED. Literally at hand), and showed me the correct form octopodes. I put it into my book as a footnote.
The form penes shows up in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I vividly remembver it from when I read it in high school, and I’ve encountered the form many times since. I can’t honestly say I’ve come across “octopi” ot “octopodes” in print until I saw that entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
By the way, does anyone recall that 1960s/1970s commercial (I forget what it was for) that had an animated stewardess complainging that she was one of those “too-budy worn out Stewardi”. It was uncharacteristically witty, and I always wondered how many people goty it. (It assumes that “Stewardess” is like “stewardus”, which, if Latin and first declension would have the plural “stewardi”. Which seems even more inappropriate since it has the form of a masculine word, which "stewardess/stewardus? ought not to be.)
It was an attempt at a small joke, no more.
What truly surprises me is the coexistence of phalli and cephalopoda in this thread with absolutely no wisecracks about Japanese tentacle-porn.
Japanese TENTACLE-porn? Do tell! I’m woefully out of touch with pornography, but this sounds velly intellesting!
Googling “hentai” would probably give you a start there. If you dare.
… I think that’s the plural; that would be Japanese-tentacles* porn. If there’s only one tentacle, it would obviously be “henta”.
- that looks wrong. it’s probably tentacli, using analogy to octopi.
Spoken with a pronounced drawn out French accent.
Pen-wa
Just to note, the modern Romance words for octopus (French: poulpe, pieuvre; Spanish: pulpo, etc.) are ultimately borrowed from Greek poly-pous, not okto-pous. The Romans couldn’t even be bothered to COUNT the little legs. Why should we use one of their plurals? (Which, btw, is polypi in Latin.)
Side note to a comment waaaaay upthread: bus, as in omnibus ([the thing] “for everybody”) is already plural, in that it’s the dative plural ending -ibus, so “bi” (or even “omnibi”) is a much, much worse abomination even than octopi with virii on their penii. The Latin plural of ’bus (res omnibus) is ’bus (res omnibus).
::: points Dr. Drake even farfther upthread to my pun about “interurban bi” 
::::
And the term “polyp” for multitentaculophorous invertebrates (whether cephalopods or coelenterates) and by extension to abnormal body growths which visually resemble them is derived from polypous. Along with, I believe, polypody ferns.
But if you say that, you kind of run into the issue of whether you can really pluralize something according to the rules of its native tongue if it’s already plural accroding to those same rules. What’s at stake in this particular example is that the plural of ‘res omnibus’ would simply be pluralizing ‘res’, which has the same ending in this case singular or plural; even if the ending were different, the abbreviation doesn’t include any of the first word.
Yes, and you broke up with her on technical grounds when she eeked at a pair of Daddy Long-Legs.
Telemarketers
Well, it might be if Japanese formed plurals in a similar way to Greek and Latin 
But it’s hentai no matter how many tentacles the young lady is trying to cope with.
That’s what I said.
What’s the relevance of this comment?
The Deuce you say!