xiphias | So, I was just telling my parents about my Octopus/Inteligent Design theory. . .

We're at my parents' house; my niece and nephew and their parents were over for the weekend for New Year's, and they just left, and Lis is asleep, and I was telling my parents about how Intelligent Design actually all holds together, if you assume that HUMANS aren't the creature that was designed. As I said, "So, all you need is to think of a creature without joints, without teeth, and whose eyes don't grow from their optic nerves, but are intelligent and have the ability to use tools. . . "

And Dad said, "Oh! Octopuses!"

I explained about Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti monster are probably therefore just visions of the Great Octopus.

And I explained my further theory about how, according to this theory, the purpose of humans was to be controlled by the Intelligent Designer to create global warming to make large shallow seas over the coastal areas that humans have built up, so that the octopuses could have the benefit of our structures while they created their own society.

And Mom said, "So, the Bush Dynasty is being controlled by Cthulhu in order to destroy humanity?"

And Dad said, "It explains a lot about Cheney -- he always did have that kind of fishy, Innsmouth look to him."

I said, "Yeah. This has actually been keeping me up at nights. . . it all hangs together all too well. If you can come up with ANYTHING that would be an argument against this, anything that will make me feel better about this, I'd love to hear it."

Mom and Dad were quiet and thinking for a while. And Mom said, "Well, they'll probably need a small slave population of humans to work the dry-land areas for a while. . . ."

(Other comments: "Well, if the Greenland ice caps go, the sea levels will go up about fifty feet. Once the octopuses get MIT, it's all over. On the other hand, they'll also get Logan Airport, which should slow them down some. . . 'I dunno, man, I went to this place near the shore, and I was stuck there for six freakin' hours. . . '")

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No, it's not. It's "octopuses", or "octopodes". "Octopi" is a Latinate plural, while "octopus" comes from Greek roots. As it's an English word with Greek roots, it can take either a Greek form plural, or an English form plural. "Octopuses" is the safest and most generally accepted form, while "octopodes" is one that I personally like for its geek factor, but "octopi" is right out.

Well, not right out, since, like the word "xiphias" meaning "swordfish", the Romans took the word "octopus" directly from the Greek and absorbed it whole into Latin, so the word "octopus" does exist in Latin, but not as a simple second declension noun. I'm sure that some Roman kids used the plural "octopi" every once in a while, as they Latinized the form, but, even in Latin, it was a foreign word which properly had the foreign pluralization "octopodes".

Specifically, it's a *third* declension noun in Latin, and is declined regularly according to those rules. Nouns ending in -us can be second, third, or fourth declension and this situation gives rise to *MORE* than three different ways to form the plural.

So the plural would be "octopera", as in "opera"?

geeek! a fellow grammar geeeek! I love it!

Dictionary.com lists "octopuses" as first choice on plural of "octopus", with "octopi" as second. Everybody wins!

Arguably "octopi" counts as a correct form despite linguistic purity simply because it is so common in usage. Even usage born of ignorance eventually trumps "proper" forms in the English language.

--Ember--

I know; we've got a living language, unlike, say, French.

Still, I feel that, as a pedant, it is my job to attempt to hold certain lines.

The following things are all common in usage, but are nonetheless wrong:

1) "Enormity" to mean "enormousness"
2) "'s" being used to form non-posessive plurals
3) "Begging the question" being used to mean "raising the question
4) "Octopi"

Admittedly, of the four of them, "octopi" annoys me orders of magnitude less than the others.

Yeah, I get twitchy about "on accident" instead of "by accident".

But I try to forgive misused apostrophes - I know they're wrong, but more often than not when I get it wrong myself it was a typing reflex, not ignorance, that caused the problem.

That's curious - how should "Enormity" be used, if at all?

--Ember--

As far as misused apostrophies: okay, I don't get THAT upset about them in emails, or on LJ -- people type and don't always proofread. But a twenty-foot-tall light-up sign on Rte 1 in Saugus states that a new restaurant will be a place for "BIRTHDAY PARTY'S", among other things. Not one of those marquee signs where you put the letters up by hand -- no, this is a professional, permanent-type of sign. And I keep asking myself -- "HOW many people had to miss that? How many people managed to miss fourth grade when they covered how to form the plural of nouns ending in 'y'?"

As far as "enormity" goes:
An "enormity" is a great evil. It can only be something done by human volition. The tsunami that washed away hundreds of villages in Aceh,Indionesia was a disaster, and it included tragedies -- it was not an "enormity". 9/11 was an enormity: it was a great disaster caused by deliberate human action out of deliberate evil.

We need that word, because we need that concept. We need a concept which tells us the difference between a disaster, something that just happens, and something that happens from human incompetence, and something that happens from human evil. Much of the destruction of New Orleans happened from human incompetence -- but we are finding pieces that are themselves examples of enormity -- the police from neighboring counties who stood on the bridges out of the city and pointed shotguns at people trying to get out, for instance. The hurricane was a natural event. The levee breach was incompetence. But some of the other actions -- and it's not yet clear how much -- were examples of enormity.

We need that concept.

On 9/11, I remember feeling that, at least I knew WHAT had happened. Having the word "enormity" to describe the deliberate mass murder of three thousand people wasn't much of a comfort -- but it was a small comfort nonetheless. At least I had a place in my mind to categorize it.

If "enormity" just meant "bigness", well, then I wouldn't have had that.

Ok, I'm with you on the sign business.

As for "enormity", I was thinking to myself that it may be a part of speech thing, but I guess, no, they're nouns either way, aren't they?

That said, words frequently mean multiple things - even very different things.

--Ember--

But we already have plenty of words that mean "enormousness", like, for instance, "enormousness", but no words that mean "enormity" except "enormity".

My rule on whether a change is good or bad for English is simple: if the change makes it so that we can express a new concept, or express an idea more specifically, concretely, poetically, or just plain better, then it's a good change. If the change removes or dilutes our ability to express a concept -- it's a bad change.

Paris Hilton sells shirts which read "THATS HOT" with no apostrophe. If that's not enough, the words "YOUR NOT" are plastered across the back.

What about my not, Ms. Hilton?

Ugh.

Yanno, I think this comment (with a little tweaking for context) could/should be its own separate post.

PS: Comment #101 in the thread!

Hense the usage "the enormaity of the concept" right?

ie - the concept is a huge, gelantanous, evil blob of death.

Much like I suspect the great octopus would be...

Frenchg lives, too. Depsite the misguided and inevitably futile attempts of the Academy.

So, I was just telling my parents about my Octopus/Inteligent Design theory. . .

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