[Gllug] OT: Microsoft sandbox?

[Richard Turner]

On Sat, 2003-08-30 at 12:18, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> At 19:40 29/08/2003, you wrote:
> >and not enquiring why OSX and Linux are less prone to virii now without 
> >requiring a
> 
> The latin plural of virus is "viri". The english plural of virus is "viruses".
> 
> Sorry, pet peeve :)

One of my pet peeves too, and an interesting issue.  To quote from the
'I'm Feeling Lucky' for 'latin plural virus' on Google
(http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html)-
_______________________________________________________________________
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 also
imply that it's 4th declension, as some scholars 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], 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.
_______________________________________________________________________

So, 'viruses' it is then :)
-- 
"Racing turtles, the grapefruit is winning..."
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