Another misconception blown away by a library book title.
After seeing a children's nonfiction book titled, Octopuses, I decided to investigate. With the whole fish/fishes fiasco, who knows these days. So. . . .
Word of the Day: octopus (noun); any octopod of the genus Octopus, having a soft, oval body and eight sucker-bearing arms, living mostly at the bottom of the sea.
plural: octopi OR octopuses
. . . wait . . . what?
With further internet research, I came upon this gem from AskOxford.com:
"Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes."
As Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser.
Word of the Day: octopus (noun); any octopod of the genus Octopus, having a soft, oval body and eight sucker-bearing arms, living mostly at the bottom of the sea.
plural: octopi OR octopuses
. . . wait . . . what?
With further internet research, I came upon this gem from AskOxford.com:
"Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes."
As Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser.