The Merriam-Webster page on the plural of octopus (linked a few posts above) cites “octopus” as an example. It is used figuratively to mean any multi-branched thing. Several examples of this usage are given, in the plural. Merriam-Webster asserts that, whatever plural one might use for a multiplicity of eight-legged cephalopods, the plural for the figurative use is “octopuses”. (ETA: This, if I read right, coming from a time when “octopi” was still the usual accepted plural, I think.)
The same page also notes that the Greek-ish plural “octopodes” is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable: oc-TOP-o-deez.
The use of “both” and “either” in English are remnants of the Dual grammatical number that existed in Indo-European and persists to varying degrees in descendant languages.
Slovene, for example, still retains the dual number. Interestingly, things that naturally come in pairs, like hands or legs, typically get inflected in the plural, not the dual.
I remember a discussion about mouse types in the early 80’s. It was suggested that a foot operated mouse was actually a rat.
Optical mice didn’t supersede ball driven mice, optical mice were around long before the Apple Lisa or Mac. They were however expensive. Mouse systems sold the default optical mouse for workstations. We bought one in early 1983. It was eye wateringly expensive. Many hundreds of dollars. Later when we bought out first Sun workstations (we bought a Sun-1, I still have it) and they came with Mouse Systems optical mice. That would have been about 1984. Even the later Sun 3 workstations did from memory. The Mouse Systems mice used a special mouse pad ruled with lines visible in optical and IR, so different LEDs and sensors could see horizontal and vertical lines. Interestingly they had two sensors, and could detect rotation of the mouse as well. Nobody ever used that capability. 3 buttons too.
Czech still has the dual for body parts that come in pairs. In addition, it uses, as I understand it, the genitive plural if the number you’re talking about is more than four, as any German who’s ever had to order beer during a party weekend in Prague can attest. You would ask for “four beers”, but “five of the beers”.
Polish does this, too, as do a lot of the Slavic languages. It can get really weird.
Rather than going through it by memory, here’s the rules according to Wikipedia:
The numeral jeden (1) behaves as an ordinary adjective, and no special rules apply. It can even be used in the plural, for example to mean “some” (and not others), or to mean “one” with pluralia tantum, e.g. jedne drzwi “one door” ( drzwi has no singular).
After the numerals dwa , trzy , cztery (2, 3, 4), and compound numbers ending with them (22, 23, 24, etc. but not 12, 13, or 14, which take -naście as a suffix and are thus not compound numbers in the first place), the noun is plural and takes the same case as the numeral, and the resulting noun phrase is plural (e.g. 4 koty stały , “4 cats stood”).
With other numbers (5, 6, etc., 20, 21, 25, etc.), if the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun takes the genitive plural form, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular (e.g. 5 kotów stało , “5 cats stood”).
With the masculine personal plural forms of numbers (as given in the morphology article section), the rule given above – that if the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun is genitive plural and the resulting phrase is neuter singular – applies to all numbers other than 1 (as in trzech mężczyzn przyszło , “three men came”), unless the alternative nominative forms dwaj , trzej , czterej (for 2, 3, 4) are used (these take nominative nouns and form a masculine plural phrase).
If the numeral is in the genitive, dative, instrumental or locative, the noun takes the same case as the numeral (except sometimes in the case of numbers that end with the nouns for 1000 and higher quantities, which often take a genitive noun regardless since they are treated as normal nouns).
So, yeah, it’s a pain in the butt. I grew up speaking Polish, but a lot of these rules have been lost in the time I’ve learned them. As a once-native speaker (I wouldn’t call my Polish quite native any more, even though it was the first language I learned), I never really thought of all these changes, but rather what sounded right, so I never really thought of as “four beers” and “five of the beers” so much as “four beers” and “five beers” but for some reason the word ending and verb changes.
Octopus is a word with multiple plurals. Mouse just has one normally.
The parallel would be if, say, thief didn’t go to thieves but to thiefs or wife didn’t go to wives but to wifes. As in if “work husbands” were paralleled by regularizing it as “work wifes,” which Google says it occasionally is.
I remember having one of these as a kid for our old Mac. Not only did it have a grid on the pad, but it was reflective like a mirror. I remember having to clean the pad a few times to make sure the mouse kept working.
Sources differ on which plurals are acceptable: Fowler’s Modern English Usage asserts that “the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses ”, while Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries accept octopi as a plural form. The Oxford English Dictionary lists octopuses , octopi , and octopodes (the order reflecting decreasing frequency of use), stating that the last form is rare. The online Oxford dictionary states that the standard plural is octopuses , that octopodes is still occasionally used, and that octopi is incorrect.
Octopus is a word with multiple plurals. Or multiple plurales? Multiple plurali? Multiple pluralz?
Mouse just has one normally, but multiple plurali abnormally.
Srsly! This thread has 91 posti already! Or 91 pestodes (pronounced pes-TOAD-eez)? Postae? The traction that this thread has acquired is, in itself, evidence of the multiple normal and abnormal pluralae of mousae that at least some people (peoples? persons? personae?) accept.
Motorola 68000. In the Sun-1 I’m pretty sure it was the basic 68000. Sun-2 was 68010, and Sun-3 was 68020. Sun had to roll their own MMU in the Sun-1 and Sun-2. The Sun-1 could be upgraded to a Sun-2 by swapping the CPU card.
Sparc didn’t come until Sun-4. There was a 80386 Sun, but it only lasted one model. It came out late in the game, as a side product. It was never part of the main line up.
I worked for a company (possibly THE company) that tried to develop an engineering/CAD/CAM workstation around the nascent 80386 Sun workstation, running some version of Unix and X-windows, circa 1987-1988. We never got it out the door. The company went belly-up a year or so later.