3 ms·
No. You seem very confident, but octopi is (grammatically) perfectly acceptable. The English word octopus is taken from the Latin (coined by Linnaeus) word oc
by fishtockos 3y ago
No. You seem very confident, but octopi is (grammatically) perfectly acceptable. The English word octopus is taken from the Latin (coined by Linnaeus) word octopus, which is of Greek origin. Greek loanwords in Latin were used very inconsistently, but many people on the internet seem to believe that it MUST be a third declension noun. However, Pliny treats the structurally identical polypus as second declension and uses the plural polypi (see https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+9&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0138 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+9&f...).