Image from: The Living World of Molluscs, http://Molluscs.at
Thank you to a recent comment from a reader questioning whether the proper plural form of octopus is octopuses or octopi. Here is the "official" answer from the editor at Merriam Webster:
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Eh. It's a mannered debate about the plural of "octopus". Honestly, I think fretting about whether the root is Latin or Greek and the ending of the plural form matches is a waste of time—we're speaking English. What matters is that it is understood, and what the convention is. So let's ask the…
Octopuses* and their cephalopod relatives are some of the smartest animals on the planet. Accordingly, many scientists want to understand how their mind works. To gain insights into the complex minds of cephalopods, researchers have been studying behavior in individual animals for years by…
This is an article about cephalopods and eye evolution, but I have to confess at the beginning that the paper it describes isn't all that interesting. I don't want you to have excessive expectations! I wanted to say a few words about it, though, because it addresses a basic question I get all the…
That smart guy, Carl Zimmer, has written an article on those smart molluscs, the octopus. I like that his conclusion is that we can't really judge their intelligence, because it is different than our own.
That's the same answer I give to questions about the existence of intelligent life in the…
Ahaha, awesome. One of my TAs in the past had a huge crusade going about getting people to say octopuses instead of octopi. It got to the point where we automatically corrected our professor when she said octopi, The TA was very proud. Though I'm tempted to say octopods just to be pretentious now.
In any case, Google Chrome's spell check seems to agree with "octopuses" and not "octopi," and we all know that's the final word.
Can I just keep saying 'octopussies'?
I read "octopussies" in a Discworld novel. I think it's a lovely word and use it at the slightest provocation.
We all know octipodies (or however you spell it) is the original Greek ending and thus the correct one - the other two have become valid by common usage. What I want to know is, what is the proper plural form for penis? Penises? Peni? Penepodies? Penelopes? Panoplies? Not that I've had any personal experience with the plural penis, but for purely theoretical reasons I'd like to know.