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Now that you mention it, I'm not sure if I've heard platypi or platypuses more.
by Arnavion 5y ago
Now that you mention it, I'm not sure if I've heard platypi or platypuses more.
- jacobolus 5y agoYou have undoubtedly heard platypuses more often. I have never seen nor heard anyone write or say “platypi” before now. Some web sleuthing suggests that platypuses is somewhere between 20 and 100 times more common in English.
- Arnavion 5y agoYour web sleuthing has an American bias. I'm from an English-speaking country but I'm not American.
- jacobolus 5y agoAre you from the 1830s? https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=platypi%2C+platypuses&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cplatypi%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cplatypuses%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=platypi%2C+pla... Platypuses don’t live in North America. Most of the older sources that Google n-gram is pulling from for the above chart are British or Australian. A substantial proportion of the recent uses of platypi are grammar guides telling people that it should always be spelled platypuses.