Momentum.
I’ve always said mouses. Dunno why, that just felt right to me. Because it’s not a real mouse, yanno?
Actually, Tolkien considered “dwarves” irregular and allowed his editors to correct it to “dwarfs” in the first editions. He preferred “dwerrow” but obviously that never took.
Well, because posters said it annoyed them, I have tried to use "an’ which is also a stupid leftover,
Once upon a time I saw a keyboard in the shape of a sphere. I always regretted not buying it because I’ve never seen it since and it looked as if it would be comfortable to use as it let your hands cup naturally.*
Ah, well.
*This hijack brought to you by memories of old technology that did not catch on.
That’s the least ergonomic keyboard I’ve heard of since the Detroit Meat Cleaver Keyboard (with vibrating wrist rest and and blood-repellent vinyl accents).
According to Merriam-Webster, octopi is the oldest plural of octopus. So there was a time where octopi was not only the standard accepted plural but was the only English plural.
Octopi appears to be the oldest of the three main plurals, dating back to the early 19th century. The -i ending comes from the belief that words of Latin origin should have Latin ending in English (while octopus may ultimately come from Greek it had a stay in New Latin before arriving here).
I’ve never seen an actual spherical keyboard (just some conceptual pictures of one), but this is certainly a real thing (one handed keyboard):
It was basically the two halves of a keyboard set vertically and in a convex arrangement. Spherical is probably a bit of a misnomer, but that’s what they called it because it did look fairly ball-like. The idea, as I understood it, was that you put it centered in front of you and then held your hands cupped around it with the outside edge of your hand resting on the surface. They claimed that it was more ergonomic to have the palms facing each other than to rotate the wrists so that the palms face down.
Do you have examples for that? It’s hard for me to think of examples where a word with an irregular plural acquires a new use. The best cast case I can think of off the top of my head is “superman” (in the sense of comic heroes), and that would, I think, carry over the irregular plural from “man”. Or perhaps “aircraft”, which is unchanged in the plural, as “craft” is.
It’s not convex, but you can get a keyboard like that from Amazon. I’ve actually had to order this a couple of times for employees at my agency based on ergonomic recommendations.
https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Accessory-Freestyle2-Ergonomic-Keyboard/dp/B00455EU7U
Still, it is a flat keyboard, not a curved one. But it is split in half, and each half can be elevated up to a complete vertical position. In my opinion it’s freaky weird, ant it is expensive, but some people say it helps them.
My son uses one much like this:
ErgoDox EZ: An Incredible Mechanical Ergonomic Keyboard (ergodox-ez.com)
(possibly exactly like this, I’m not sure what brand he has.)
As someone who learned touch typing nearly 40 years ago, I hate ergonomic keyboards like that. The 6 is with the wrong hand!
It certainly is and has been an accepted plural, in the sense that people accept it. But it has never been a standard plural. The standard to which it’s attempting to adhere is “Words that came to English from Latin should form their plurals according to Latin rules”. But despite ending in -us, the Latin word “Octopus” is third declension, not second, and therefore its Latin plural is “octopodes”, not “octopi”.
Isn’t octopus Greek? I thought that is why octopodes was the etymologically consistent plural. I also advocate “platypodes”
Brian
I don’t trust ANYONE over Terry Pratchett!
Dan
an stupid leftover.
Dan
According to the article, it was originally Greek but was adopted into New Latin and was adopted from there into English. Hence the -i rather than -odes since it was considered a Latin word at the time someone got around to making a plural form.
No, it was always Octopuses, never octopi. That is a fake plural as the double S sound some people don’t like.
It’s something I remember from books on language. I can’t figure out how to do a search on the subject, though. If you want to put the assertion in abeyance unless I stumble over it again, I’m fine with that.