That’s when they’ll no longer be jokey. You can bring that usage lecture when they’re established as non-joke usage…
Some of us in the biz get around this by calling alumni/ae “alums”, which sounds awful. Using the right terminology doesn’t seem to help, though. Every time I’ve used “alumnae” to refer to female graduates I’ve gotten weird looks.
At least “alum” is better than the term my old employer Oxford uses to refer to its graduates: “Old Member”.
The Latin virus also doesn’t mean virus, so that’s kind of a meaningless point.
It’s a meaningless point only if you think that it was part of an argument. It was in fact merely interesting trivia. I know that viruses is correct in English and I wondered about its Latin form, only to discover there was none.
I think that should be buttices.
Yes I do get that word running around in my head but I’m pretty sure I’ve never said it out loud so don’t glare at me. At least not about that one - “condominia” are different.
Stop being such sourpodes
Right, but what I’m saying is that it’s only a mass noun in Latin because it means something totally different: poison. There isn’t a Latin equivalent of virus.
So why didn’t you put it this way: "As an aside, in Latin, virus means ‘poison.’ "? Because the way you’re expressing yourself, it feels like you’re trying to argue with me.
Because I would never, ever, ever use the phrase “as an aside”. I consider it a crime against the English language.
Really.
Don’t be ridiculous. That has absolutely no panache.
“Bartender, give me a martinus.”
I’ll have two martini, too.