So, I guess my favorite choice was not entirely the right one.īut I did find out that people that say "octopi" call us people that say "octopuses" ignorant slobs.Īndroid 8. Mostly because she states that today, all 3 inflections ( octopuses, octopi and octopodes) are correct, which would match the what the Scrabble Dictionary tells us. It's an old video, but definitely interesting. It's a video (below) of Kory Stamper, an Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster (publisher of the Scrabble Dictionary) talking about the plural version of octopus. Not that I care, because I've only ever used it in this article.īut really, I didn't feel like writing this blog post until I came across a video at Boing Boing, aptly named Great Moments in Pedantry: Octopuses, octopi, octopodes, which was just days after my initial discovery.
Interesting that it does not include the adjective, octopoid. Modern usage of octopodes is so infrequent that many people mistakenly create the erroneous plural form octopi, formed according to rules for Latin plurals.īut then I wondered what variations of the alien-like sea dweller were in the Scrabble Dictionary. However, the word octopus comes from Greek, and the Greek plural form is octopodes ( |äk'täp?dez|). USAGE The standard English plural of octopus is octopuses. ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Greek oktopous (see also Octopoda). Fun fact for Day 4: the plural of octopus can, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, be octopuses, octopi or octopodes 100daysofcolour watercolour. You know, that Dictionary application no one knows about. I just always used the one I liked best, which was octopuses.Īt least, according to my trusty New Oxford American Dictionary on my MacBook Pro. We've all probably wondered about the popular octopoid conundrum of what is the correct plural form of octopus: octopi or octopuses? I sure have, but I've never bothered to look into it. Actually, I was just curious as to what an octopus was, and I found the answer, which was a cephalopod mollusk in the order Octopoda. A couple of days ago, I had some questions regarding the mighty tentacled beast of our oceans- the octopus.