You must log in or register to comment.
Octopoden!
American English: “All of the above are valid.”
“Even ‘octopussies?’”
American English: “…sure.”
“even ‘octopussies’?”
american english:
Aham, there’s some precedent
There is a difference in Octopussys here. One is slippery, the other is not.
It’s technically octopods
This is true for the scientific sense that it’s order Octopoda (e.g. the plural for members of Hexapoda is “hexapods” and likewise “decapods” for Decapoda), but then it’s kind of like saying the plural for “lobster” is “nephropids”. The names are close for Octopoda and octopus, but it’s still taking the colloquial name and pluralizing it into its scientific name. It’s not specifically “to bring it in line with cephalopod”; that’s just how generic names of members of taxa ending in ‘poda’ work generally.
Strictly speaking, “octopods” is the plural of “octopod”.
Once I learned that “octopodes” is pronounced oct-TOP-o-dees not OCT-uh-pohds it became my pluralization of choice.
Octopodes nuts
2 octopus = 1 hexadecipus
Octopussies is actually the name for a harem of Maud Adams clones
Student: “language is prescriptive not descriptive”
Teacher: “you fail 3rd grade spelling”
And I absolutely support keeping people back who believe English should be guided and evolved through “Likes”.
Putting aside the technicalities (it is not language that is prescriptive or descriptive, but linguistics), that’s a widespread position among perfectly literate people, including professional linguists. Nothing to do with the number of “likes”.
different languages and institutions have different viewpoints. Turkish and French are more prescriptive, english and spanish more descriptive*
* except when it comes to those gay alternate pronouns, like ew, we can’t reflect the documentation of a language for a few Fa-[slur]s.
Spanish from Spain has an official dictionary that dictates what is correct and isn’t. You can’t be more prescriptive than that. Sure, that dictionary adds words based on usage, even ones that are clear misspellings of the “real” word, but they are marked as so.
The RAE is not a prescriptive institution at all. They fight people on social media over that. They’re not shaming anyone for spelling a word different, just describing what the language users are doing.
It should just refer to the number of tentacles. So, for two of them, it would be sēdecimpus
Octopuses have limbs known as “arms.”
Tentacles are a different thing, like the two that squid have (the rest are also arms.)
Just like meese is the plural of moose
No cheeses for us meeces :(
So… 2 cephalopods, 1 cephalopus ?
Lv7: the legs [of]* two octopodum got tangled, so the octopodes asked help from two other octopodibus.
ENOUGH OF THE NOMINATIVE TYRANNY!
*it feels weird to use “of” with genitive, it’s like saying *“the leg of a cat’s”.
Octopiss
Merriam Webster’s response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s166nC_hiZ0
I spent the entire 2nd half of that video in fear that it was actually an elaborate “octopodeez nuts” joke
Level 10: all forms are valid as long as enough people use them. The currently most used forms are octopuses and octopi, both valid, but octopi is malformed, so octopuses is preferred. Octopussses and octopii and rare variants of those. Also correct, but rarely used.
Octopodes is also correct, but considered pedantic.Level 11: Just use what you are used to.
Your prof is Roger Moore?
As a native greek speaker, I find anything other than “octopuses” to be silly. In greek we don’t say (any more) octopodes, we say “chtapodia” (the “ch” is the canonical (ELOT) transliteration of the letter χ).
