Slashdot Mirror

Neither. They're supposed to describe the bits of language that are actually used by large populations. Slang and jargon are covered in slang and jargon dictionaries unless they reach critical mass and enter the popular lexicon. Most dictionaries screen for historicity also, so that if a word newly coined word is incredibly popular for a week but fades into oblivion, it doesn't enter. This is a good reference -- note the menu on the right of the page.

"guaranty: Now rare, superseded by GUARANTEE v. Also 8 guarranty. [f. the n.]

1. trans. = GUARANTEE v. 1.

1753 Scots Mag. Jan. 8/2 Her allies should engage to guaranty the tranquillity of the north. 1775 JOHNSON Tax. no Tyr. 58 They talk of their pretended immunities guarrantied by the plighted faith of Government. 1779-81 {emem} Fredk. Gt. Wks. IV. 545 He was ready to guaranty all the German Dominions of the House of Austria. 1786 BURKE W. Hastings Wks. 1813 (4) VI. 693 His..request of the Company's guarantying his treaty with the Vizier. 1857 R. TOMES Amer. in Japan xiii. 301 That friendly intercourse with the Japanese which was guarantied by the compact solemnly entered into between Japan and the United States. a1861 MRS. BROWNING Bianca iii, God's Ever guaranties this Now. 1875 POSTE Gaius III. Comm. (ed. 2) 402 The fidejussor may be employed to guaranty any obligation."

So at least it's considered "rare". But I am still wrong so thanks again. Another humbling experience on my quest to not be stupid or ignorant or...

We'll lend you ours if you want to see what English actually looks like.

If somebody wants to know what English actually looks like, they'll have to try an English dictionary, wherein the word for the round rubber things on automobile wheels is spelled "tyre" rather than "tire".

But, still, the language you speak up there is closer to English than is the language we speak down here, at least in the way it's spelled^Wspelt....

2. A person obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a particular religious creed, opinion, or ritual.

Being obstinately wedded to the opinion that being gay is 'wrong' is, I would argue, unreasonable (i.e. not supported by a rational basis), and therefore bigoted, by dictionary definition.

shrink rapped

well known ecyclopidias

Perhaps I could interest you in a well-known Dictionary?

and to top it off, they neglected to include Vulcan, Klingon, Romulan, or even Elvish in their multi-lingual Page Not Found notices...

Ungrateful lingua-fascists! How easy they forget a former employee.

The full OED is available online, if you're willing to pay $300/yr, or if you are affiliated with some institution which pays for it.

What ARE you talking about? The 2nd Edition was completed in 1989, at a cost of 13 million pounds, and they have been revising it constantly since then. See for yourself.

I don't see any links to this Jesse character on the OED site. Is this April 1st? Non-profit? OED? The company that sells dictionaries? Curiouser and curiouser.

The homepage of Jesseword has his full name along with a link to the OED staff page http://oed.com/about/staff.html to verify the sites authenticity. Doesn't look like any kind of joke. Conspiracy theories should be better thought out and researched.

A popular American dictionary allows the variant spelling; a superior British dictionary exposes your ignorance by explaining what a flack is. In case you don't have a subsscription to the latter (you could do with one):

A blow, slap, or stroke.

Historical use:

1823 MOOR Suffolk Words, Flack, a blow. a1825 FORBY Voc. E. Anglia, Flack, a blow, particularly with something loose and pliant.

Furthermore I agree with the other reply - 'receiving flak' (and the more British 'coming in for [a lot of] flak') is not leetspeak, it's a phrase used often in the British media.

Oxford announced the addition of the word "macmini" to their dictionary which appears to be a unit to measure size and coolness at the same time. Typical examples of its usage are:

- Cool, my new Mac Mini is exactly one macmini
- Duh, my iPod is less than half a macmini
- Who the hell would buy a 10 macminis Shuttle XPC SN25P
- Add a full macmini to your p****, 100% safe!

Your right but I prefer the Oxford definition here

Well in English it is! :-)

In case it's not obvious, http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aantidisest ablishmentarianism fails completely,

unlike http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=antidises tablishmentarianism

and http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/findword?query_type= word&queryword=antidisestablishmentarianism

(The latter needing to come from a suitable IP, like a UK uni, or with an account...)

Ok, I know this is nitpicking but I have to say this: The plural of "virus" is "viruses" not "virii". If you don't believe me, check your Oxford English Dictionary.
Also, you can find more information from this webpage that has an analysis of those ignorant minds who use a words like "virii": Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing, but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.

when the words "to slashdot", "slashdotting", and "slashbot will be included in the English dictionaries...

How about we post a front-page story to Merriam-Webster's and Oxford's?

Hmmm, that's strange. I only read your post just now. I thought I was replying to the same parent you replied to, in which context my post makes better sense.

In any case, Merriam-Webster's definition indicates that an acronym may be either pronouncable or not. Personally, I would personaly consider Merriam-Webster to be the second most authoritative English dictionary, after the OED, which even bills itself (probably rightly) as the "definitive record of the English language". Unfortunately, OED doesn't allow free online lookups and, again unfortunately but not surprisingly, "acronym" does not happen to be their free word of the day.

Other online dictionaries disagree about pronouncability as a requirement. I like what another poster said about the "nym" suffix meaning "word", but I don't know if I agree that a "word" must be pronouncable. I haven't really thought about it. Lots of words don't agree 100% with their etymology (the chairman might be female, for example.)

I agree with you that an abbreviation should be the shortening of a single word, but some dicionaries seem to indicate that an acronym is a special form of an abbreviation, which disagrees with our point of view.

If I could get OED's verdict I would submit to whatever it happens to be. Failing that, I'll cite Merriam-Webster, which happens to accord with my own opinion.

Hmmm, that's strange. I only read your post just now. I thought I was replying to the same parent you replied to, in which context my post makes better sense.

In any case, Merriam-Webster's definition indicates that an acronym may be either pronouncable or not. Personally, I would personaly consider Merriam-Webster to be the second most authoritative English dictionary, after the OED, which even bills itself (probably rightly) as the "definitive record of the English language". Unfortunately, OED doesn't allow free online lookups and, again unfortunately but not surprisingly, "acronym" does not happen to be their free word of the day.

Other online dictionaries disagree about pronouncability as a requirement. I like what another poster said about the "nym" suffix meaning "word", but I don't know if I agree that a "word" must be pronouncable. I haven't really thought about it. Lots of words don't agree 100% with their etymology (the chairman might be female, for example.)

I agree with you that an abbreviation should be the shortening of a single word, but some dicionaries seem to indicate that an acronym is a special form of an abbreviation, which disagrees with our point of view.

If I could get OED's verdict I would submit to whatever it happens to be. Failing that, I'll cite Merriam-Webster, which happens to accord with my own opinion.

I wouldn't have let him get away with misspelling "adze". But that's just me. : )

For the record, I call "Bullshit!" on the official Scrabble dictionary. It's full of prefixes and onomatopoeias. You want to play Scrabble with me? Bring your OED.

Why would you look to Wired for questions about language? That's what dictionaries are for! If you want to know if a word should be capitalized or not, look to a dictionary like OED or Merriam-Webster. Incidentally, Merriam-Webster lists internet with a capital "I."

The word "hackers" was successfully successfully co-opted long, long, long ago ("a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system"), so don't fault Apple's (currently correct and appropriate) use of the word, and save us the tiresome lectures.

First, the full Apple statement, since it's not referenced in the summary:

"We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and other laws. We strongly caution Real and their customers that when we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods."

- Regarding the DMCA: you can't fault Apple for using a law on the books - passed by Congress (unanimously by the Senate), and signed into law by President Clinton - to protect its own business interests. If you don't like the DMCA, or aspects of copyright law in general, work to change the law(s), but don't fault companies or individuals for conducting themselves within the bounds of those laws while they are in force.

- What Apple says regarding breakage is true. Some might argue that any breakage would be intentional; however, you can certainly also agree that otherwise benign changes to the iPod or its firmware may indeed break Real's reverse engineering. Intentional or no, this would still leave customers who have purchased songs via Real out in the cold, which ultimately, to the average customer, reflects poorly on Apple and the iPod (moreso than on Real). Does Apple, or its customers, really want an environment where any changes to the iPod to add functionality or features can break customers' music that they've ostensibly legitimately purchased?

- The word "hackers" was successfully co-opted long, long, long ago ("a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system"), so don't fault Apple's (currently correct and appropriate) use of the word, and save us the tiresome lectures.

That said, yes, Apple could sublicense Fairplay, as they have done with Motorola. But still, it means both parties must agree, and doesn't excuse Real.

Others remember the continued arrogance and mistakes regarding OS licensing long ago. "Apple could potentially become the Microsoft of online music," they say. But this could only potentially happen by cannibalizing iPod sales. The iPod would be akin to the "PC"; the iTunes Music Store would be "Windows". (Remember: Microsoft never made computers). But for Apple, the iTunes Music Store is a break even proposition: its sole purpose from a business perspective is to drive iPod sales and adoption, and, to a lesser extent, adoption of other Apple products. Apple's iPod and hardware margins are to-die-for in the computer industry, while the iTunes Music Store, even after having sold 100 million songs, only recently made a "small profit". Additionally, Apple maintaining control over the whole process from end to end is one of the things that makes the iTunes/iPod experience so friendly and pleasing. This may no longer be true with other manufacturer's products.

I'm not arguing against for or against licensing here, only pointing out that it's more of a difficult situation than people make it out to be. The iTunes Music Store and the iPod, for Apple, are inextricably connected, at least currently. Allowing the iPod to work with other online music stores can be argued to hurt Apple's iTunes/iPod strategy, while allowing the iTunes Music Store to work with other players definitely hurts iPod sales. Sure, you can make all sorts of contrary arguments, but there are valid arguments just as contrary to those. All that said, Apple

It is official; Netcraft confirms: English is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered English speaking community when Slashdot confirmed that English use has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Orkut members. Coming on the heels of a recent Slashdot poll which plainly states that English has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. English is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Orkut census.

You don't need a foreskin to predict English's future. The hand writing is on the wall: English faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for English because English is dying. Things are looking very bad for America. As many of us are already aware, English continues to be lost in the Portuguese babble. Long vowels and hard consonants crumple like Volkswagens facing the SUV juggernaut which is Brazil.
American English is the most endangered of them all, having been overwhelmed by 93% of all Brazilians. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time American English scholars Daniel Webster and Noam Chomsky only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: American English is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.Theo, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, states that there are 350,000 speakers of American English. How many speakers of Portuguese are there? Let's see. The number of English versus Portuguese posts on Orkut is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 350000/5 = 70000 Portuguese speakers. Japanese posts on Orkut are about half of the volume of Portuguese posts. Therefore there are about 35000 speakers of English. A recent article put
Portuguese at about 80 percent of the Orkut market. Therefore there are (70000+5000+700)*4 = 302800 Brazilians! This is consistent with the number of Orkut messages to English speaking groups.

Due to the troubles of Google, abysmal sales and so on, America went out of business and was taken over by Canada who speak two dying languages. Now Canada is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that English has steadily declined in users. English is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If English is to survive at all it will be among Minnesotans and survivalist groups hunkered down in Montana. English continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, English is dead.

Fact: English is dying

The Oxford English Dictionary. The definitive record of the english language. Started in 1879, the OED was intended to catalogue every word in the english language and contains quoted excerpts of the earliest written usages of each word. The history of it is pretty interesting. There's a few good books about it's compilation too.May favorite was The Professor and the Madman.

The Oxford English Dictionary. The definitive record of the english language. Started in 1879, the OED was intended to catalogue every word in the english language and contains quoted excerpts of the earliest written usages of each word. The history of it is pretty interesting. There's a few good books about it's compilation too.May favorite was The Professor and the Madman.

You can actually verb something... and you can architect a solution for any verbing problem, m'kay?

Both words with sufficient history to claim "Not Invented Here"

You can actually verb something... and you can architect a solution for any verbing problem, m'kay?

Both words with sufficient history to claim "Not Invented Here"

No, I'm pretty sure it's "antidotes." Perhaps you should throw away that American "English" dictionary and start reading a real English one instead.

Puh. Silly Americans make me want to triggle a pot of bubblycock.

Could you please look that up in the Oxford English Dictionary? I don't trust so-called "American" dictionaries to tell me what is and what isn't a word.

Proper English speakers use the word "antidote," not the phony American creation "anecdote."

And the '69 Britannica still had a lot of the older articles by quite famous scientists. The article on electro-magnetism is highly impressive, and the one on the history and nature of mathematical logic is written by Alonzo Church! (I understand newer Britannicas have dumbed down considerably, which is a shame.)

The bodkin is more likely to have been something like a knitting needle (see here if you have an OED subscription).

We need a way out, which is why I suggest putting a disclaimer on Linux distributions regarding the possibility of inadvertent proprietary code inclusion, and some time limit that would allow recalcitrant IP holders to find and withdraw their code if they wish to. Failing to notify the code maintainers would then be an implied grant of permission to use the code.

I don't think the courts would be particularly impressed with this suggestion. It is somewhat analagous to the idea that if I distribute a dictionary with a remarkable similarity to the Oxford English Dictionary but with a little disclaimer stating that it is up to the copyright owners to notify me within a set timeframe, then I get an implicit right to distribute their work. Ain't gonna happen. Copyright holders get until the copyright expires to protect their work, which is as it should be. (The question of how long the protection should last is a different matter.)

The simple solution if any packages are found to contain unauthorized copied code is just to remove those packages from distributions until they are fixed. One of the great benefits of the "duplication of effort" that goes into GNU/Linux, and which is often criticized on in this forum, is that there is no shortage of packages if alternatives need to be found quickly.

Sections in this document:

• English Inflections
• Classical Inflections and References
• Journey Into the Fourth Declension (new)
• Other Latin Resources
• ASM News
• ASM News Update (new)
• Footnotes

English Inflections First off, the OED gives nothing but viruses for the plural. Here's its abbreviated entry:

Etymology: a. L.

virus slimy liquid, poison, offensive odour or taste. Hence also Fr., Sp., Pg. virus.

1 Venom, such as is emitted by a poisonous animal. Also fig.

2 Path. a A morbid principle or poisonous substance produced in the body as the result of some disease, esp. one capable of being introduced into other persons or animals by inoculations or otherwise and of developing the same disease in them. Now superseded by the next sense.

b Pl. viruses. An infectious organism that is usu. submicroscopic, can multiply only inside certain living host cells (in many cases causing disease) and is now understood to be a non-cellular structure lacking any intrinsic metabolism and usually comprising a DNA or RNA core inside a protein coat (see also quot. 1977). [ Formerly referred to as filterable viruses, their first distinguishing characteristic being the ability to pass through filters that retained bacteria. ]

Other sources that support viruses include Birchfield (n Fowler :-) in Modern English Usage (3rd Edition), and also the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language . Classical Inflections While one would hope that the authoritative sources cited above would suffice, some writers prefer to maintain the classical inflections on some English words, particularly in technical writing. For example, conflicting indexes/indices and minimums/minima are both easily found, depending on the intended audience and use. In that case, what's the classical plural of virus?

The simple answer is that there wasn't one. The longer answer follows.

Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.

Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.

This apparently invariant use of virus as a genitive singular may als

I thought I'd better check what you said, given that it sounded wrong. So I did. And it would appear that criterion is the singular, criteria (less commonly criterions) is the plural, but that criteria is not acceptable in the singular. So the phrase "an exit criteria" is wrong.

Forget Websters, use the OED!

It's not like the French or German or Italian which have their own institutions to determine the specifics of the words that are allowed.

No...it's ignorance on your part. The Oxford English Dictionary is the institution in charge of following the evolution of the english language. It has for the past millenium. See???

irony, n. 1. A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt. 2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things.

Brought to you by the OED online!

Early ME. colur, later colour, color, a. OF. color, culur, colur, later colour, coulour (retained in AFr.), couleur (= Pr., Sp. color, It. colore):L. color-em. Latin long o passed in OF. into a very close sound intermediate between o and u, both of which letters, and subsequently the digraph ou, were used to express it; in an accented syllable the sound at length changed to written eu, whence mod.F. couleur. The OE. word was hw, HUE. Colour, corresponding to the late AFr., has been the normal spelling in Eng. from 14th c.; but color has been used occasionally, chiefly under L. influence, from 15th c., and is now the prevalent spelling in U.S.

I would like to offer this quote from the Oxford English Dictionary Newsletter for June 2002.

More so than at any time in history, American English plays a dominant role internationally, exporting words from technical fields to street slang and everything in between.

The OED's North American Editorial Unit (NAEU) is ensuring that American terms can be edited in America by Americans who are familiar with the peculiarities of American English, its dialects, and its history. The extensive scholarship devoted to American English can be more efficiently monitored from here, and we stay in touch with leading scholars and current research by attending the major academic conferences.

For its first two years, the NAEU made do with a single editor, who had to handle everything, leaving little time for broad-based editorial attention to the OED text. In November, the office appointed Madeline McDonnell and Abigail Zitin as its first two Assistant Editors. Now that they have completed their preliminary training, they are able to make a substantial contribution to the OED's coverage of American English. Rather than merely glancing over the entries that are labelled 'U.S.', the NAEU now has the opportunity to review all editorial text, ensuring that American nuances are not missed through being unfamiliar to the British editor who originally reviewed the word.

Game-Set-Match!

Netizens passed along the baby because he represented a geek show as well as a freak show.

In comparison, consider this usage from 1961, as quoted in the OED:-

Times Lit. Suppl. 27 Jan. 62/2 He picks up waitress, a simple girl, and enslaves a "geek", a dumb sideshow stooge whose daily routine consists of being exhibited in a pit which he has to dig for himself.

That's right folks; before 1990's, a 'geek show', ie, shows by " a carnival 'wild man' whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake" (Webster; quoted again at the same OED link) meant a 'freak show'.

It's called the Oxford English Dictionary.

Which one? Dictionary.com? Merriam-Webster? The American Heritage? The Oxford English Dictionary? I can't find it.

However, I was using Oxford English in it's purest form.

Check the Websters Unabridged Dictionary definition here.

Go figure.

Actually, it isn't.

Are you using the full Unabridged version, or just the free online edition? I'm not turning over my credit card number for a trial subscription, but is it possible that there is additional content available for subscribers?

If we break out the biggest gun--the OED itself--one finds the last definition for irony is as follows. Unfortunately, a subscription most definitely is required, so you will have to take my word for it. (Do you think I would go to the trouble of making this stuff up?)

irony ('aI@rnI, 'aI@r@nI), a. Also 4-7 yrony, -ie, 6 yrnye. [f. iron sb.1 + -y.] Consisting of iron; of the nature of iron; resembling iron in some quality, as hardness, taste, or colour; abounding in or containing iron.

1382 Wyclif Deut. xxviii. 23 Be heuene that is aboue thee braasny [1388 brasun]; and the lond that thou tredist yrony [1388 yrun, 1611 of iron]. 1583 Stanyhurst Æneis, etc. Ps. ii. (Arb.) 127 From oure persons pluck we there yrnye yokes. 1654 Hammond Fundamentals (J.), It is not strange if the irony chains have more solidity than the contemplative. 1764 Nat. Hist. in Ann. Reg. 82/2 It is a ponderous irony earth. 1843 Portlock Geol. 541 Sulphate of barytes, associated with irony quartz. 1875 G. Macdonald Malcolm II. xviii. 243 Crystals of a clear irony brown.

The word "warcraft" was NOT a word in the english language (or any language on the planet) at the time that Blizzard thought it up for their first game in the series.

Too right. One of the best resources of historical usage is the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED has a Word of the Day page. Somtimes reading through the history of the usage of a word is fascinating.

The WOTD is "Buttered". (For those of you reading this on 4.3.2003

Actually, if you're* not an illiterate hick Spelt is perfectly valid British English.

* : Note the correct usage of an apostrophy to denote the contraction of "you are". I am well aware of the usage of an apostrophy, and the difference between "its" and "it's". My keyboard sucks, however.

Sections in this document:

• English Inflections [slashdot.org]
• Classical Inflections [slashdot.org] and References [slashdot.org]
• Journey Into the Fourth Declension [slashdot.org] (new)
• Other Latin Resources [slashdot.org]
• ASM News [slashdot.org]
• ASM News Update [slashdot.org] (new)
• Footnotes [slashdot.org]

Etymology: a. L. virus slimy liquid, poison, offensive odour or taste. Hence also Fr., Sp., Pg. virus.

1 Venom, such as is emitted by a poisonous animal. Also fig.

2 Path. a A morbid principle or poisonous substance produced in the body as the result of some disease, esp. one capable of being introduced into other persons or animals by inoculations or otherwise and of developing the same disease in them. Now superseded by the next sense.

b Pl. viruses. An infectious organism that is usu. submicroscopic, can multiply only inside certain living host cells (in many cases causing disease) and is now understood to be a non-cellular structure lacking any intrinsic metabolism and usually comprising a DNA or RNA core inside a protein coat (see also quot. 1977). [ Formerly referred to as filterable viruses, their first distinguishing characteristic being the ability to pass through filters that retained bacteria. ]

The simple answer is that there wasn't one. The longer answer follows.

Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.

Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1] [slashdot.org], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.

This apparently invariant use of virus as a genitive singular may also imply that it's 4th declension, as some scholars [slashdot.org] believe.

Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2] [slashdot.org], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.

The crucial problem here is that, classically speaking, there appears to be no recorded use of virus in the plural. It was a 2nd declension noun ending in -us, which is rather common, but it was also a neuter, which is rather rare. I could only come up with three such 2nd declension neuters: virus [tufts.edu] (some poison), pelagus [tufts.edu] (the sea, usually poetically), and vulgus [tufts.edu] (the crowd). None appear to admit plurals. Perhaps this is because they are mass nouns, not count nouns. [3] [slashdot.org]

One citation below wonders whether these -us 2nd declension neuters might have inflected -us => -ora, the way the 3rd declension's neuter plurals for tempus and corpus do. There's really not any support for that notion--that I could find at least. If so, that would end up producing *virora. Most other citations think that these plurals just never happened at all, or that if they did, they didn't jump declensions. Perhaps they were invariant as they oddly are for the vocative and accusative cases. In any event, *virora does not fit comfortably in the mouth of an English speaker, which is a good reason to avoid it.[4] [slashdot.org]

Another theory holds that virus, if it was a 2nd declension neuter, must go to *vira in the plural as do its -um neuter brethren in the 2nd declension. However, that assumes that it works like a -um form, not as a -us form does. And it really seems to do neither. If it were a -us form (again, as a 2nd declension nominative), then its vocative would have to be *vire; but it's really only virus. You also expect an accusative form *viros, but that too is missing; it's still just virus in the accusative. And if it were a -um form, then its vocative would have to be *virum. But it's not--here again, it's only virus. (Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion. :-)

So what we have here is something of a mixed or invariant declension. Trying to find a plural for something that didn't take a plural (possibly because it was not a count but a mass noun), or at least, one for which no plural is classically attested, is a fruitless endeavour. Best to stick with English and use viruses. Journey Into the Fourth Declension Some scholars, includining Gavin Betts, believe that virus pertained not to the second declension, but to the fourth one. Here is an example or two that support[5] [slashdot.org] Betts and dispute the 2nd declension theory. The first is classical, from Ammianus [geocities.com]:

qui ut coluber copia virus exuberans natorum

Just another note: You must not forget that Ammian's native tongue was Greek, not Latin - so it's (very hypothetical!) possible he understood virus as a so called accusativus respectus and copia as adverbial expression. (A more common phenomenon in Greek.) exuberare was combined that way with lucrum and there was a tendency to use non-transitive verbs in a (active) transitive way - like anhelare or spumare in late antiquity's Latin as well. (The pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium's fourth book is an outstanding exception with its usage of anhelans et spumans in the passage about the denarratio and the following example IF one dates it to 80 a.Chr.n. ...) But - to make a conclusion - it's not classical at all to use the form viri(i), because there isn't any genitive-singular- or nominative-plural-form (*) viri found in the whole Latin literature up to the first century p.Chr.n. as far as PHI-CD-Rom can tell :-)

Here's what other sources have to say about this matter:

alt.usage.english FAQ [ccp14.ac.uk] Not all Latin words ending in -us had plurals in -i. Apparatus, cantus, coitus, hiatus, impetus, Jesus, nexus, plexus, prospectus, and status were 4th declension in Latin, and had plurals in -us with a long `u'. Corpus, genus, and opus were 3rd declension, with plurals corpora, genera, and opera. Virus is not attested in the plural in Latin, and is of a rare form (2nd declension neuter in -us) that makes it debatable what the Latin plural would have been; the only plural in English is viruses. Omnibus and rebus were not nominative nouns in Latin. Ignoramus was not a noun in Latin.

[...] classical plurals [...] [ilhawaii.net] What is the plural of virus? This neuter in Latin lacked a plural; it would presumably [disputable -tchrist ] have been virora like corpora, the plural of neuter corpus. (Like corpora, virora would be stressed on its initial syllable. As indicated earlier, *corpi would be as outlandish--as far beyond the pale--as *rhinoceri and *octopi.)

Latin had several declensions containing neuter, feminine, and masculine words ending in -us; the plurals are different in each one. Incidentally, the singular of mores (pronounced `moh-rehs') is mos, with the same change of `s' to `r' between vowels heard in corpus : corpora and in genus : genera.

Allen and Greenough [tufts.edu] The authors at the cited reference point out the follwoing:

Many Greek nouns retain their original gender: as, arctus (F.), the Polar Bear; methodus (F.), method.

a. The following in -us are Neuter; their accusative (as with all neuters) is the same as the nominative: pelagus, sea; virus, poison; vulgus (rarely M.), the crowd. They are not found in the plural, except pelagus, which has a rare nominative and accusative plural pelage.

NOTE.--The nominative plural neuter cete, sea monsters, occurs; the nominative singular cetus occurs in Vitruvius.

Latin inflections [erols.com] And for those who just can't get enough, try this. It is a bunch of inflection tables, more complete than I've seen elsewhere. For a good time, figure out the nominative plural of venus is. Hint: it's not veni. ASM News Apparently this question is `in the air'. The following is from the June 1999 issue of ASM News by the American Society for Microbiology, sent it by Jim Sandoz.

/* Begin Excerpt */

Numerous Latin words have been taken over into the modern scientific vocabulary, most without difficulty. The Latin word virus, however, presents a minor but interesting problem, if one wishes to express a phrase such as Index of Viruses in its Latin form. By analogy with other nouns, one would expect the normal Latin equivalent to be Index Virorum. The difficulty stems from the fact that the Latin noun virus is defective, i.e. does not have a full set of case--forms, singular and plural. The Roman grammarian Priscian (fl. 500 A.D.) states that some claim the word is indeclinable (i.e., has only one form for all the cases in the singular); others, apparently more accurately, that it is declined in the singular according to the second declension neuter and cite two passages from the poet Lucretius in substantiation. All of the ancient grammarians are in agreement, however, that the word is used in the singular only, which indeed appears to be true, for no plural forms are attested in extant Latin works.

In antiquity the word virus had not yet acquired, of course, its current scientific meaning; rather it denoted something like toxicity, venom, a poisonous, deleterious, or unpleasant agent or principle, or poison in the abstract or general sense. (The first meaning given for this word, a slimy liquid, slime, in the most widely used Latin-English dictionaries is inaccurate; the error has been corrected in the more recent Oxford Latin Dictionary.) Nouns denoting entities that are countable pluralize (book, books); nouns denoting noncountable entities do not (except under special circumstances) pluralize (air, mood, valor). The term virus in antiquity appears to have belonged to the latter category, hence the nonexistence of plural forms.

When the word was taken over into modern languages and acquired its current scientific meaning, it changed categories and denoted a countable entity. The modern languages which have adopted the word each pluralize it in their own fashion (e.g., Eng. viruses, Germ. Viren; French and Italian do not distinguish in form between singular and plural, virus). But what to do in neo-Latin, which normally is subject to the rules and constraints of classical Latin?

W. T. Steam in his manual on botanical Latin (Botanical Latin, Newton Abbey, 2nd ed., 1973) gives what would be the normal plural forms of such a second declension neuter noun: nominative vira, genitive virorum, without, however, indicating his authority for those forms. It may be observed that in Latin as in other languages when the plural of noncountable nouns does occur, it generally denotes various kinds of the entity (e.g., wine, honey, oil). Steam may have applied this principle to virus in order to meet the requirements of modern scientific terminology. If Latin had continued to be the common international language of scholars and scientists at the time that viruses were first identified, it appears likely that it would have generated the forms adduced by Steam.

Robert J. Smutny

ASM News Update The following letter recently appeared in ASM News, from Ton E. van den Bogaard. (Formatting added.)

On the Presence of a Plural of the Latin Noun "Virus"

With interest I read the contribution `On the Absence of a Plural of the Latin Noun ``Virus''' in the June 1999 ASM News, p. 388, by Robert J. Smutny. However, according to my Latin grammar, one of the very few books of my gymnasium (high school) days that is still up to date, the plural of the noun virus in Latin is, like the plural nowadays used for virus in Romance languages (e.g., Italian and French), also virus. The Latin noun virus does not belong to the second declension group but, like the noun fructus, meaning fruit or piece of fruit, belongs to a group of Latin words that is declined according to the fourth declension. Hence, two pieces of fruit is in Latin duo fructus and two viruses would be duo virus. According to the fourth declension the plural genitive of virus in Latin is viruum and therefore an Index of Viruses is in Latin an Index Viruum. Virorum is the plural genitive of the Latin noun vir (second declension) meaning man or husband. Consequently an Index Virorum would indicate a list of husbands or men.

Moreover, because the noun virus belongs to the fourth declension group the study of viruses should have been called virulogy and people practicing that science virulogists. My former professor in virology at veterinary school consequently called himself a virulogist and he lectured virulogy. I am afraid that these words have become extinct since he died.

It is important to realize that Latin and Greek derived expressions in biomedical English have been coined by scientists for convenience and not by scholars based on classical grammar. The old Romans might have said to these scientists modulating their language: ``Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas,'' which means freely translated: ``Despite your lack of knowledge, still appreciated.''

Ton E. van den Bogaard
University Maastricht, the Netherlands

Here are some Web resources: The Perseus Project [tufts.edu] Read Caesar, Catullus, Cicero, Hirtius, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Plautus, Servius, and Vergil, plus quite a bit of other useful material. For example, you can look up virus [tufts.edu] for a definition and forms, or find its citations [tufts.edu] in literature. Here's one by Vergil [tufts.edu].

Latin Textbook: Wheelock's Latin (HTML) [cuhk.edu.hk] Wonderful on-line course notes designed as a study aid for those without formal grammar/linguistics training. Note that `the entire zip archive' he advertises isn't really complete, and so I used these commands to pull in and view the whole thing locally: % cd /tmp % wget -r -l2 http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Wheelock-Lat in/ % netscape /tmp/humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Wheelock-Latin /index.html

The Classics Page [patriot.net] Innumerable links, including some to on-line interactive exercises and to various dictionaries.

Transcriptio Nuntiorum Hebdomadalis [www.yle.fi] Read your daily news--in Latin! Also contains sound files for the radio version whence it was transcribed. I'm sure glad that we now write FAQ instead of interrogata usitatissima. :-)

De Meditatione [rr.com] Various Latin snippets and sound clips. Footnotes [1] One examble of an invariant genitive form of virus is attested in Ammianus [geocities.com], which reads: qui ut coluber copia virus exuberans natorum. See the original for details. [2] Well, in English; in Latin it probably wasn't, as their `v' was likely more akin to the intervocalic `v' in today's Spanish, a sound with no equivalent in English but which is often perceived as a `w'. To be even more technical, an English `v' is a voiced labial-dental fricative. An intervocalic Spanish `v' (or `b') such as in aves, is a voiced bilabial fricative, usually represented in IPA as a lower-case Greek beta. [3] Some budding Romance philologist should go research a possible connection between the neuter conceptual nouns versus the gendered discrete ones in asturianu [asturies.org], the only extant Romance tongue with anything aproximating neuter nouns [asturies.org] (I'm not counting the nominalized adjectives of Spanish such as lo difcil, since these aren't really nouns the way the so-called nomes de xneru neutru (de materia) are in asturianu.) a [4] The word virora actually appears to exist, but as some sort of South American tree. [5] Yes, I hated this sentence, too. It takes the singular verb "is" because the singular "an example" is the closer of the two elements in the disjunction, but likewise, "support" should be in the plural because the closer thing to it is now "two", which is obviously nonsingular. I think only a rewrite would be tolerable. Silly rules.

Sections in this document:

• English Inflections [slashdot.org]
• Classical Inflections [slashdot.org] and References [slashdot.org]
• Other Latin Resources [slashdot.org]
• ASM News [slashdot.org]
• Footnotes [slashdot.org]

O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consilii particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum.

Cicero [utexas.edu], Oratio in Catilinam Prima [utexas.edu], 2

piss@fuck.com [mailto]

i wonder why you didnt had pick up the british dictionaire? Its only 900 years older than the one you had pointed

Football means foot on ball
-American Football its played mostly with the hands,
-WorldWide Football its played mostly with the foot

i[sic] wonder why you didnt[sic] had[sic] pick up the british dictionaire[sic]?

"2 usually spherical object used in game,"does not require a 'ball' to be spherical, merely that it be used in a game. The non-spherical balls used the the games the US and Canada each call football fit this definition.

Also from the OED, the definition of footballagain is consistent with the games North Americans call football, given the above definition of ball: "1 large inflated usually leather ball. 2 team game played with this."

To what 900 year old English dictionary do you refer? The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the generally accepted UK dictionary, began to be compiled in 1857 and a complete edition was not published until 1928. There were previous British dictionaries, notably Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, but I do not believe any exist which were written 900 years ago, and if they did, consulting them for modern definitions would be ridiculous.