What is the plural of "penis"?

What a wonderful answer! Thanks for being careful about Latin and other plurals but also acknowledging that usage over the years means that sometimes ‘incorrect’ forms are to be preferred.

The Staff Report in question is What is the plural of “penis”?

And welcome to the boards, tccIII.

Excellent answer – I mean, content-wise, not just correctness of such (not that I would know). I suddenly have a hankerin’ to go learn Latin.

Bravo!!
and re.: fluidtherapy: Ditto!

Hmmm… Were plurals of these mentioned?

Actually, “virus” appears to have been a freak – 2nd-declension neuter ending in -us. There are two other such words, “pelagus” (the sea) and “vulgus” (the rabble), and maybe one or two more, but none of them have plurals that could be generalized from. (“Pelagus” means “the sea” as opposed to “the land” – no plural.)

It got into English by a roundabout route. Before the invention of the electron microscope, it was clear that some diseases were spread by something that behaved like bacterial colonies, but couldn’t be seen in even the most powerful microscope, or caught in even the finest filter. The name “filterable virus” was attached to this class of mysterious whozis. Eventually, we found out what it was, and the name “virus” became attached to the individual virus thingy. But the thingies, unlike “poison” (in the sense that the word has in a sentence like “Poison is a bad thing to have around the house”) were individual critters, and thus needed a plural in English that the word had never needed in Latin. Hence: “viruses”.

And, of course, it’s the same for the metaphorical viruses that metaphorically infect computers.

Another great column, bibliophage!

There are some interesting examples of double plurals in the King James Bible from those. Isaiah 6:2:

(And also Isaiah 6:6.)

And a whole bunch of examples of “cherubims”. Shakespeare uses the form “cherubins”.

Does this mean that the plural of Elvis is Elves? :dubious:

From the staff report:

My sources say that uncle comes from the Latin avunculus, via the Old French oncle. One English word that did arise in this way is apron (a napron taken incorrectly as an apron. Another, in the reverse direction, is nickname, from an eke name.

The uncle/nuncle mistake was pointed out in another thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=234156 I expect the report to be corrected in the next few days.

The language columns are always sweet. A+

woot

I do not have Latinate testes. I have good old English testicles (“the boys” to my close friends). And while we’re on the subject, of course you all know where that word comes from (testify) and why (the ancient Hebrew habit of touching them when swearing an oath ;j ).

What is the proper pronunciation of -ides? Does it move the accented syllable?

The one that I run into is ephemeris. Bibliophage’s report would seem to indicate that one of the plurals I hear (ephemerides) is probably the correct Latin plural.

My experience with it is in GPS papers and articles, where it is the list of parameters used to calculate the satellite positions. It also applies more generically to calculating the positions of whatever heavenly body, but I’m not as familiar with the common usage in other fields.

From what I gather, the astronomical use would be that an entire publication of parameters for many bodies is an ephemeris. I guess a shelf full of several editions would be classically be ephemerides.

For many GPS people, the ephemeris is the list of parameters for one satellite. For a collection of these for multiple satellites*, some people use ephemerises, others use ephemerides, and still others ephemeris (I think as a collective singular).

It seems to me that one of the many pronunciations used for ephemerides, where it’s as if it ends in the English word “rides”, has caused some to think that an individual parameter is an ephemeride or even an ephemerid (which apparently is really a mayfly).

*not to be confused with the almanac, which in GPS lingo is the lower-resolution collection of parameters for all available satellites

If ignoramus is Latin for “we are ignorant”, what would be the correct Latin term for “an ignorant person” (or even “you are ignorant”)?

Perhaps this column should be renamed "Latin nouns and plurals 101 by Cecil Adams" :p. The answer went much farther than the question, but sometimes it’s good to get more than you bargined for.

Hey, bibliophage, can you clear up “cactus” while you’re at it? My research implies that “cacti” is actually correct, (neo-latin from Greek kaktos) but I’d quite like to get your opinion.

Unless I overlooked something, bibliophage didn’t touch on one plural that makes no sense to me at all - clitorides, the plural of clitoris. This is the only plural given in both the Ninth and Tenth editions of Webster’s Collegiate. An explanation would be most welcome.

Clitoris is Greek (entering English via Latin). Nothing odd about clitorides.

Ignoramus, meaning “We do not know”, is the old legal term for a grand jury not finding a true bill (i.e., not handing down an indictment). It was long thought that ignoramus became a noun in English via using it as an insult to the grand jury that refused to indict the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1681, but it now seems to be a bit older than that, based on an old joke about an incompetent lawyer who thought ignoramus was someone’s name.

As to a real Latin word with more or less the sense of ignoramus, there’s ignorans, which is strictly an adjective, meaning “not knowing”, but Latin generally allows the use of adjective X as a noun mean “X thing” or “X person”, etc. Or ignoror, which would literally mean “not knower”. But I’d be more inclined to go with one of the more ordinary words for “fool”.

And here I thought the plural of penis was “Bush Administration”

http://www.wordorigins.org/wordort.htm#Testify

The correct Latin plural is indeed ephemerides. There are no silent vowels in Latin so every vowel (or diphthong) gets its own syllable. Ephemerides then has five syllables (ef-e-MER-i-deez) and ephemeris only four ( e-FEM-er-is). In both cases, the third-to-last syllable (antepenult) gets the primary stress, which is quite common for long Latin words.

Cacti is the correct Latin plural, as far as I know. Cactuses is also acceptable in English.

As I mentioned in the report, either clitorises or clitorides is correct in English. Clitoris was borrowed into Latin from Greek, and in both those languages the full root of the word (clitorid- in Latin, kleitorid- in Greek) is not found in the dictionary-entry form (nominitive singular). Iris/irides, cantharis/cantharides (blister beetle), and ephemeris/ephemerides are similar examples.