# Proper Greek pluralization, should it trump over 100 years of common English usage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 15, 2006, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752 "2006-08-15T01:34:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/101 "2006-08-21T00:48:13Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] Can I mention that _octopi_ annoys the fuck out of me? I’d like to personally give a bloody nose to everybody who goes around inventing fake Latin plurals for words. Except when they’re joking. Lord help me, I’ve seen people here on the SDMB use _penii_ instead of _penises_ or _penes_. Where the hell did this notion of plurals in _-ii_ come from in the first place? [/QUOTE] You might need a time machine to get those responsible for Octopi. We have already establish that a very well known and respected Roman Natural philosopher is responsible for Pegasi making its way down to us today. Penii sounds silly to me and looks silly in writing. Out of wonder, I searched for what context it was use here in the Dope. I found 162 uses. So perhaps it is another word that deserves a history check and Excalibre and I are wrong about Penii being incorrect. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7541650&postcount=55](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7541650&postcount=55) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7425005&postcount=28](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7425005&postcount=28) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7387295&postcount=5](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7387295&postcount=5) Etc. The word seems to be used in both confusion and as the believe correct word. American Heritage & Houghton Mifflin on-line suggests: n., pl. -nis·es or -nes (-nēz). **Etymology** \*The word is derived from a Latin word for tail, also used to describe the organ, “penis”. The Latin word “phallus” (from the Greek “φαλλος”) is sometimes used to describe the penis, though the word originally was used to describe images, pictoral or carved, of the penis [1]. Some derive the Latin word penis from earlier \*pesnis, and the Greek word peos = “penis” from earlier \*pesos. \* The 1900 (Actual book) Cyclopedia suggests: -nes or -nises. I would say Penii is not only silly looking but wrong with no legitimate support for its usage. Jim ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/102 "2006-08-21T01:40:24Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] You might need a time machine to get those responsible for Octopi. [/quote] Oh, I know. Note that I don’t share the enthusiasm for obscure plurals, either. I’d rather see people, when a word’s plural is obscure like that of octopus, use the eminently sensible approach of pluralizing it the English way. I guess it’s my own particular breed of prescriptivism. > [@](#): > > We have already establish that a very well known and respected Roman Natural philosopher is responsible for Pegasi making its way down to us today. I don’t speak any Greek, so I couldn’t guess as to how bad an error that is, but given the _-us_ ending, it appears the word was already thoroughly Romanized. And why would I fault Latin speakers for using Latin morphology? My complaint was with certain English speakers _attempting_ to use Latin morphology and failing like the pretentious dummies they are. > [@](#): > > Penii sounds silly to me and looks silly in writing. Out of wonder, I searched for what context it was use here in the Dope. I found 162 uses. So perhaps it is another word that deserves a history check and Excalibre and I are wrong about Penii being incorrect. Goes to show something about this place, eh? Lends a bit of perspective to claims that this is the smartest group of people in the world. What’s particularly egregious about _penii_ is that there’s simply no possible reason to think it could be the plural of _penis_. _-ii_ is not a plural ending in any of the five Latin noun declensions - the Latin ending people are trying to apply in these cases _simply doesn’t exist!_ I can’t even begin to imagine why people think Latin plurals would ever end in _-ii_. The only such words are second declension masculine nouns whose stem ends in _-i_ (except that, in most cases, the extra _i_ was eliminated in Latin); the only such word I know of in English is _radius_, which is obviously composed of the stem _radi-_ and the ending _-us_. There’s plenty of other Latin words ending in _-us_ that have plurals in _-i_, but none of them end up ending in two _i_s. Cactus, fungus, nucleus - there’s quite a few common examples that people could look at. That would explain people inventing a form like \*_peni_ (if we also allow that most people are too dumb to notice that _penis_ ends in _-is_, not _-us_.) But there’s simply no reason why anyone should possibly imagine that _-ii_ is somehow a plural ending in Latin. Ever. Because it’s not. And the ridiculous-looking _penii_ is not in any kind of common usage in the real world, either, as far as I can tell. Granted, neither of the two real plurals for _penis_ is used terribly often, but _penii_ certainly has to appear even more rarely. I’ve never run into these ridiculous _-ii_ plurals anywhere but the internet, and it’s actually led me to wonder if the semiliterates who perpetrate such things are actually picking them up elsewhere on the internet - lending some actual credence to the claim that the internet is affecting people’s language abilities. It’s not just that _penii_ is not the classical plural of the word. It’s that people have apparently invented the plural ending _-ii_, from God knows where, and have begun applying it to any Latin-looking word they see, even in cases in which the word’s spelling should be a clue as to its plural. Those who are literate enough to know the plurals of such words as _crisis_, _analysis_, or _thesis_ can see what the Latin-based plural ending for _penis_ ought to be. (Though once, here on the SDMB, I actually saw someone write “theses (thesii?)” - signalling that he actually learned the plural of the word _thesis_ at some point but for some reason decided to abandon that knowledge and use this pernicious _-ii_ ending instead. And with any Latin word more obscure than, say, _cactus_, the Latin plural is used alongside the English-style plural. If people would simply use English plurals, they could avoid this difficulty. (In fact, I’d argue that _penises_ is probably stylistically preferable to the more obscure _penes_.) I’m not sure, then, why people feel the need to try to invent these ridiculous-looking plurals in _-ii_. The only guess I can make is that some people are so full of pseudointellectual bullshit that they can’t stand to use the commonly-used plural and instead embarrass themselves by attempting to use a Latin plural they don’t know. I guess the idea is that they’re too smart to use the English-style plural, even though the evidence is quite clear that they’re way too dumb to use the Latin plural. Such people should be viciously mocked or perhaps slapped. At least _octopi_, by contrast, is a reasonable guess at what the plural might be. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/103 "2006-08-21T01:46:07Z")
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness] If there were fewer people who got irritated over nonstandard plurals, there would probably be fewer people who made Latinerrific plurals out of nonLatinaceous words. It’s the folks who insist on “antennae” and “succubi” who are responsible for “pegasi” and “penii”: folks who _haven’t_ studied Latin know that these podesantic will sneer at them if they form improper plurals, and so they do their best to avoid those sneers. Daniel [/QUOTE] No one is sneering at people who use English-style plurals; that’s the point. And inventing an utterly and completely implausible plural because you don’t know the word’s actual plural is hardly a good strategy to avoid being mocked. I’m all for sneering at people who, for whatever reason, consider themselves above using the actual, common plurals of words - in this case, _penises_ is both by far the most commonly-used plural of the word and also one easily guessed at by any native speaker of English. I feel perfectly entitled to sneer at people who decide to guess at what they think the Latin plural might have been and fail so thoroughly at it. I think a bit more sneering might do such people good. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/104 "2006-08-21T01:59:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by **Excalibre** > Can I mention that octopi annoys the fuck out of me? Well there you go. It’s not completely useless. I’d always assumed octopi was proper. It was in the books I read, and Jacques Cousteau used to use it. I never heard anyhting but that or octopus for the plural. Shouldn’t cactus actually be cactoi? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/105 "2006-08-21T03:10:31Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] Shouldn’t cactus actually be cactoi? [/QUOTE] Nope. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/106 "2006-08-21T04:14:25Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] It’s not just that _penii_ is not the classical plural of the word. It’s that people have apparently invented the plural ending _-ii_, from God knows where, and have begun applying it to any Latin-looking word they see, even in cases in which the word’s spelling should be a clue as to its plural. Those who are literate enough to know the plurals of such words as _crisis_, _analysis_, or _thesis_ can see what the Latin-based plural ending for _penis_ ought to be. (Though once, here on the SDMB, I actually saw someone write “theses (thesii?)” - signalling that he actually learned the plural of the word _thesis_ at some point but for some reason decided to abandon that knowledge and use this pernicious _-ii_ ending instead. [/QUOTE] Most of the time I’ve seen it, it’s been a joke. Oh, I know. Pluralization is no joking matter. Someone could put an eye out, especially with all those penii. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/107 "2006-08-21T04:23:27Z")
[QUOTE=jsgoddess] Most of the time I’ve seen it, it’s been a joke. Oh, I know. Pluralization is no joking matter. Someone could put an eye out, especially with all those penii. [/QUOTE] Some people might have started making jokes about it. But I’m talking about when people do it and are, apparently, completely unaware that it’s wrong. I’m not talking about actual jokes (like the one about sa and ba mentioned earlier), I’m talking about clearly erroneous usages. That or a lot of people are making the same incomprehensible, utterly unfunny joke about _penii_ and _virii_. The specific examples I’m discussing don’t even work as a joke, because it’s not as though they involve applying a Latin ending to a non-Latin word - since _-ii_ is not a Latin plural ending in the first place, it doesn’t really work as a joke, does it? Feel free, though, to point out exactly why the 162 examples that **What Exit?** apparently found were all jokes. I’d love to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/108 "2006-08-21T04:40:57Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] Feel free, though, to point out exactly why the 162 examples that **What Exit?** apparently found were all jokes. I’d love to hear it. [/QUOTE] I’ll go ahead and do that, right after you point out to me exactly where I claimed the 162 examples were all jokes. I never made such a claim. I wasn’t even talking specifically about this messageboard. I guess I was right–pluralization is no laughing matter. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/109 "2006-08-21T05:49:11Z")
[QUOTE=jsgoddess] I guess I was right–pluralization is no laughing matter. [/QUOTE] That’s not really the point, is it? Because what _I_ was describing is not a joke; what I was describing wouldn’t even make sense as a joke. Certainly some uses of fake Latin plurals are jokes, but what I was describing clearly is not. Forgive me if I get irritable when someone obviously hasn’t paid any attention to what I was actually describing. So in actuality you have seen _some_ uses of fake Latin as jokes. The “sa” and “ba” joke earlier in this thread is one such example. But since that’s not the kind of thing I was talking about, and since what I was talking about simply wouldn’t be any kind of comprehensible joke, you apparently didn’t bother to figure out what I was talking about. Yeah, that annoys me. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/110 "2006-08-21T13:27:35Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] That’s not really the point, is it? Because what _I_ was describing is not a joke; what I was describing wouldn’t even make sense as a joke. Certainly some uses of fake Latin plurals are jokes, but what I was describing clearly is not. Forgive me if I get irritable when someone obviously hasn’t paid any attention to what I was actually describing. [/QUOTE] You got pissy with me and demanded that I defend every usage on the Dope as a joke and now you complain that _I_ wasn’t paying attention to what _you_ said? Huh. The next time I see someone use “penii,” which is pretty freaking rare, I’ll ask them what they meant by it. Until then, I’ll leave you to pick a fight with some other unfortunate passerby. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/111 "2006-08-21T15:28:50Z")
[Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data](http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/plurals?view=uk) OED take. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/112 "2006-08-21T15:41:19Z")
[QUOTE=jsgoddess] You got pissy with me and demanded that I defend every usage on the Dope as a joke and now you complain that _I_ wasn’t paying attention to what _you_ said? Huh. The next time I see someone use “penii,” which is pretty freaking rare, I’ll ask them what they meant by it. Until then, I’ll leave you to pick a fight with some other unfortunate passerby. [/QUOTE] I just don’t understand it. I expressed my own irritation at something that is, quite obviously, a matter of slightly less importance than, say, arguments over which season of _Everybody Loves Raymond_ is the best. I don’t see why my own confession of personal annoyance at such things had to lead to a bunch of nonsensical arguments. I mean, it’s not even remotely plausible that people who write _penii_ are joking, because it’s not a joke. It doesn’t make sense to interpret that as a joke. There’s simply not a joke there. The only plausible joke someone could make out of that would be jokingly mocking people for inventing stupid plurals like _penii_ - a joke that would, quite obviously, require lots of non-joke prior usages. Hell, I would settle for you finding _one_ usage of it as a joke, but you’re not going to, because as we both recognize, people who use the word _penii_ aren’t joking, they’re just stupid. So why did you start arguing with me? Is the fact that I’m irritated by people’s ignorance so offensive to you that you have to start an argument over it? Given that what you suggested doesn’t even make sense, it’s obvious that you weren’t trying to start any kind of reasoned discussion on it. You apparently just saw that I was irritated by people’s ignorance and simply had to argue with me. I don’t understand why people go around starting arguments for no reason. If there’s some actual matter of disagreement to be discussed, then discussing it is obviously a valuable thing to do. Since in this case there wasn’t, what in the world led you to come here and start contradicting me? Why argue if you don’t have anything to argue about? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/113 "2006-08-21T16:03:18Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] [Oxford Languages | The home of language data.](http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/plurals?view=uk) OED take. [/QUOTE] The most important paragraph from the link appears to be this one: > [@](#): > > Although it is often supposed that \*\*octopi \*\* is the ‘correct’ plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural **octopuses** , it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the **Greek word oktopous** , and its ‘correct’ plural would logically be **octopodes**. \*Bolding is mine. \* They acknowledge the older form and the Latin path to English, they mention the proper Greek plural form and appear to be saying Octopuses is the proper English form. **sinjin** posted the actual OED entry. So they accept that Octopi is both a common usage and an older usage, but strongly prefer **Octopuses**. I believe that while I will never make fun of or think poorly of someone that uses Octopi, I will try to switch over to Octopuses. If I am to place my faith in any one authority on the English language, I am willing to abide by the OED. **Case Sensitive** : as you were the primary objector to Octopi, did this thread at least reduce your scorn of the usage of Octopi? Jim ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/114 "2006-08-21T16:20:24Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] No one is sneering at people who use English-style plurals; that’s the point. [/QUOTE] In this thread, you’re right, but in the real world, you’re wrong. There are sites such as [this one](http://english-zone.com/spelling/plurals.html) that carefully explain that the plural of antenna is antennae, that stimuluses is incorrect, that more than one thesis is theses. Someone who said they hate funguses would be very likely to be corrected at an English teachers convention, and imagine the howls of laughter if Bush talked about the nucleuses of atoms. I think you’re right, that forming a regular plural of a noun ought never be sneered at; but I think you’re wrong if you say the sneering never occurs. It is that sneering that folks do that leads to over-generalization of the Latin-plural rules. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/115 "2006-08-21T17:00:43Z")
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness] In this thread, you’re right, but in the real world, you’re wrong. There are sites such as [this one](http://english-zone.com/spelling/plurals.html) that carefully explain that the plural of antenna is antennae, that stimuluses is incorrect, that more than one thesis is theses. Someone who said they hate funguses would be very likely to be corrected at an English teachers convention, and imagine the howls of laughter if Bush talked about the nucleuses of atoms. I think you’re right, that forming a regular plural of a noun ought never be sneered at; but I think you’re wrong if you say the sneering never occurs. It is that sneering that folks do that leads to over-generalization of the Latin-plural rules. Daniel [/QUOTE] Some of them are so common and well-established that I think it is fair to regard using English-style plurals as an error. The plural of _crisis_ is _crises_; the plural of _fungus_ is _fungi_. While I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter eventually became regularized, I’d be quite surprised if the former did, as it would create a word that was fairly difficult to pronounce. (Seems more likely to be that the word might simply not change to indicate the plural, as in Spanish: _una crisis_, _dos crisis_.) My understanding is that _antennae_ is used in some fields and _antennas_ in other; I think that _antennae_ is used in biology and _antennas_ is used in electronics, but don’t quote me on that. It’s certainly not unusual for a word that is in use only in one field to retain even an obscure plural - for instance, most people who know enough math to know what a _matrix_ or a _vertex_ is know that in quantity they are _matrices_ and _vertices_. _Appendix_ is another one with two widely-used plurals; in medicine, the only plural in common use is _appendixes_, from what I’ve read, while when referring to the end of a book, both _appendixes_ and _appendices_ are pretty normal. Anyone who advises people not to use English-style plurals at all is obviously incorrect; with some words, and in some fields, _only_ the English-style plurals can be called correct. But with words as common as _fungus_ or _nucleus_ or _stimulus_, using the English-style plural definitely goes against common usage, and it certainly seems fair to me to call that an error. I’m not sure why you think it’s not. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/116 "2006-08-21T17:11:23Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] I mean, it’s not even remotely plausible that people who write _penii_ are joking, because it’s not a joke. It doesn’t make sense to interpret that as a joke. There’s simply not a joke there. [/QUOTE] When someone writes “Thank Og!” are they joking? If I send an IM to my friend telling him my day is “Teh suxx0r!” am I joking? How about when I say we’re using the internets? It’s a deliberate or habitual use of a form that doesn’t pass rigid grammatical inspection. It’s not supposed to be a knee-slapper, just a little amusement. I call that a joke. If you don’t call that a joke, what do you call it? (Yeah, yeah, lame.) Most of my limited exposure to “penii” falls into the same category. I very specifically didn’t say “always” or “everybody,” and I didn’t say what your experience was. I don’t spend most of my time here, and I don’t generally talk about penises when I do, so this is not a usage that I see very often here. Actually, one of my above examples is a good one: “teh.” Teh can be a simple error, or it can be a deliberate one. And until you know the person, you don’t know which it is. Like !!!11 The Dope doesn’t have many l33t speakers, but that’s where I tend to see the usage, sometimes spelled p3nii. God, there’s even a comic by the name. (I’ve also seen the plural of hippopotamus as “hippopotamice” and “hippopotamooses.” Just now, I saw “hippopotopoda.”) Also, and this will really piss you off, usage of “penii” as a singular for “penis” seems to be increasing. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/117 "2006-08-21T17:48:28Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] **Case Sensitive** : as you were the primary objector to Octopi, did this thread at least reduce your scorn of the usage of Octopi? [/QUOTE] I think you’re glossing over the ultimately philosophical argument here. There is a fundamental argument between _descriptivism_ and _prescriptivism_. English teaching is traditionally prescriptivist - that is, it involves declaring certain usages correct and others incorrect, regardless of how common the ‘incorrect’ usages may be in the wild. At its most ridiculous extreme, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries misguided principles were offered up on the basis of comparisons to Latin or arguments from logic. Thus we have the traditional rule against “splitting infinitives”, based on a particularly bad analogy to Latin grammar, and the injunction against ending sentences with prepositions, because doing so is impossible in Latin. Even though those rules aren’t taught much anymore, they’re still mostly avoided in formal writing. Descriptivism, on the other hand, is the attitude underlying linguistics, since linguistics (ideally, at least) is the scientific study of language. Obviously, declaring certain usages ‘correct’ and others ‘incorrect’ is incompatible with scientific study; the notion is rather absurd on its face from the perspective of a linguist. It would be like Jane Goodall trying to teach the chimpanzees the value of chastity - science is inherently based around observation, not legislation. I’d go into exactly why I think prescriptivism is inherently problematic, beyond not being useful in academic study, but this post is way too long as it is. Dictionaries used to prescribe certain uses (in fact, many of them still contain usage notes - but their recommendations are generally not in line with traditional prescriptivist commandments.) Webster’s first dictionary, for instance, deliberately promulgated reformed spellings, and it’s to Noah Webster that we owe the American spellings of _color_ and _center_. Other spellings he recommended never caught on, though - you won’t find many formal writing with _thru_ or _tho_, tho both are occasionally found in informal writing. Modern dictionaries, in contrast to those of Webster’s day, are basically descriptivist in their approach, functioning as documentation of usage and normally including nonstandard words and pronuciations and meanings that are disliked by prescriptivists. Note that, considering the way dictionaries are designed, it’s more accurate to refer to them as documentation of language, rather than authorities to be consulted. Note the use of scare quotes in the OED quotation you include; the OED documented both the common use and the particular uses recommended by prescriptivists, but they weren’t particularly recommending any usage - just describing the various ones in existence. Neither Case Sensitive nor I are particularly inclined to accept the dictionary’s word when it comes to usage advice, I suspect. The OED is a work of tremendous scholarship - it’s the most complete and most thoroughly researched work of lexicography in existence. But it doesn’t purport to represent itself as a usage guide, and it shouldn’t. That’s not within the realm of academic study of language. And those who believe in the silly flights of prescriptivist fancy that Case Sensitive has engaged in here - notably, the idea that if people handle it roughly, language is liable to break on us - are not usually friendly to the idea of dictionaries as documents rather than sets of rules. You seem to be approaching this from the common, but fundamentally mistaken, perspective that there is some ultimately ‘correct’ form of language, some ‘Platonic form’ of the English language that truly exists somewhere out there, but that can never be realized in our imperfect universe. This perspective is mostly promulgated, in my experience, by schoolteachers who simply describe some uses as “bad English” or “improper grammar”, as though a child’s speech has been objectively measured against the Platonic ideal and found wanting. But there is no abstractly ‘correct’ language - there’s only the language that people actually speak, in the various circumstances they speak it, and the particular, arbitrary, rules that the prescriptivists yell about. In many cases, we can even trace the origins of those rules, and figure out exactly who came up with them in the first place. When people talk about a particular sentence being “technically incorrect”, they’re commiting this particular error. There is no such thing as “technical correctness”; you can attempt to guess at whether or not a sentence is the sort of thing that people actually say (and that’s what linguists do, with the imperfect tools we have to do it), or you can say that it passes muster with some particular prescriptivist authority, but - given that the prescriptivists themselves squabble about what is “right” and what is “wrong” - it’s simply logically invalid to imply that correctness can be measured “technically”, rather than simply being a matter of opinion. A lot of people regard dictionaries as authorities on correct usages, but the authors of dictionaries don’t represent them as such, and it’s a mistake to imbue them with any particular authority in the matter. It simply doesn’t make sense to try to guess at gradations of “correctness” and “incorrectness” as reported in dictionaries, because it presupposes some objectively correct or incorrect usage that dictionaries attempt to convey. And that Platonic form of the language, as I’ve pointed out, simply doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/118 "2006-08-21T18:03:37Z")
[QUOTE=jsgoddess] When someone writes “Thank Og!” are they joking? If I send an IM to my friend telling him my day is “Teh suxx0r!” am I joking? How about when I say we’re using the internets? [/quote] In each of those cases, someone is mocking a specific usage. In the case of “Og” and “the internets”, reference is being made to some specific event well-known to the joker (and, if they’re lucky, their audience.) In the case of “teh suxx0r”, reference is again being made to a specific thing - a speech community in which such forms are used unironically. What specific event or circumstance are people referring to when they “joke” about “penii”? Did some famous person, in a public forum, use it and subject themselves to comedians’ jokes? Or did it become a standing joke because someone frequently, in their fury to type so fast, mistyped “penis” as “penii”? No, of course not. There’s no specific event or person being referenced, so it doesn’t work in comparison to those jokes. So, in the absence of a specific incident to inspire such jokes, if it indeed is being used mockingly - something I haven’t seen even once - it must be being used as a joke _based upon how frequently it’s seen in writing_. And if that’s the case, it sort of proves my point for me, doesn’t it? If people are joking about “penii”, it must be because other people before them used the term in an unironic sense, and so frequently as to make it notable to the joker and the audience. If that’s the case, then what happened is exactly what I complained about earlier - a lot of people, in their ignorance, decided that “penii” is the correct plural of _penis_. So many people did so that it’s actually a viable topic for humor. Which means that, once again, you don’t have any grounds to argue with me that the form is in use as a joke rather than as an error. > [@](#): > > Most of my limited exposure to “penii” falls into the same category. Find examples. Because I don’t believe that this is true. Not only have I never seen such a joke, but I’m willing to bet that if you’ve actually run into the form in people’s writings, it wasn’t a joke, at least in the great majority of circumstances. Because I don’t think it’s prominent enough in people’s minds to be viable as a topic of humor. I think your claim is a mistake. It’s possible that, in some subcommunity, the usage has become so frequent as to become the topic of jokes. I haven’t seen any signs of that. I doubt it’s happened, but it may have. Until I see evidence, I’m going with the more likely possibility - you, for some reason, got pissed off at me for being irritated at the error I described, and decided to contradict me - not because you were presenting some valid contradiction (since, so far, there’s no evidence to suggest that your claim, even when limited to a reference to your own experience, is actually valid) but because you wanted to disagree with me about it. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/119 "2006-08-21T18:05:18Z")
Incidentally, jsgoddess, “p3nii” in reference to penises only shows up in two sites indexed by Google, so I’m questioning your assertion that that’s in any kind of common usage either. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752/120 "2006-08-21T18:33:52Z")
\*\*Excalibre \*\*: Thank you for the excellent post 117. Your post would make a great essay. I was indeed looking at the OED as being as close to a final authority as English has, and your perspective on it is a far superior way of viewing dictionaries. I am obviously not a linguist, just a 4 year Latin student that collects old reference books and studies history for fun. My familiarity with linguistics is colored by studying a dead language that has close to absolute rules. English is continually changing, adding new words from other languages and creating new words from Greek & Latin roots. It is reasonable to establish rules and expect them to be honored, but not reasonable to expect 100% compliance. Is that a fair summary to draw from what you wrote? Jim [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-greek-pluralization-should-it-trump-over-100-years-of-common-english-usage/368752.md?page=7)