this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Iunnrais@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

The correct GREEK plural, which would be used because the root of octopus is Greek, could be octopodes. However, in ENGLISH, people have started intuiting that words ending in “~us” pluralize to ~i, akin to cacti. So this isn’t about being a Latin rule, it’s actually an emergent English rule.