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Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

nature.com

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Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#21

Post by pvaldes »

dharmab wrote: post #5
4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

If you want to get really pedantic, use Octopodes :)

Octopoda is the order, better not mix both terms

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#22

Post by DFHippie »

bananarchist wrote: post #9
4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)

Virus is the only neuter second declension Latin noun in -us (as opposed to -um). It means "poison" in Latin. I assume this was all meant tongue-in-cheek, but in case anyone is curious, the Latin plural is not virodes.

All of this is recalled from my high school Latin, which was a long time ago.

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#26

Post by addaon »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #6

As a counterpoint, The Atlantic ran an interesting article[0] yesterday suggesting that it's not really clear what the Octopuses' aims are when they do this, and that we do really like to anthropomorphize them. [0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/11/gloomy-o...

They really like being anthropomorphized.

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#27

Post by annyeonghada »

bananarchist wrote: post #9
4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)

In latin the word virus does not have an attested plural[1] but if we model it from the other neuter nouns of the second declension it would be "vira".

[1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Declension_4

The plural of surplus is surpluses[2]. It would be *surplures/surplura in latin, so it is an English/French original. It doesn't make sense from an historical linguistic perspective to have a stem in dental "d" when in latin was in liquid "r": plus, pluris[3].

[2]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surplus#Noun [3]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus#Declension

Cactus is a masculine name from the second declension: its latin plural is "cactī"[4]. Again, it would be unexplainable how that stem in dental would appear in a second declension name (stem in "o").

[4]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cactus#Latin

Octopus is right, given that it's a third declension name with a dental stem.[5]

[5]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopus#Latin

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#28

Post by colechristensen »

daveslash wrote: post #20
bananarchist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)

It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group, whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish. I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without making any indication as to weather they are…

There’s no right way. Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules there.

It is not a loanword from Greek, it was meant to be a scientific latin origin word, but not native latin like other Latin words that have -us as endings for nouns.

It’s a mess, there’s no answer, pluralize as you like but don’t go telling anyone there’s a right way because there isn’t. It’s a greek, latin, and english word, but also none of them. No usage is standard or ultimately correct.

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#30

Post by adrian_b »

mc32 wrote: post #10
bananarchist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)

I always thought it was virus and virus given its root.

All the attested uses of the word virus in Latin are only in the singular number.

Nevertheless, the correct plural would have been "virora", like tempus => tempora (time => times) or corpus => corpora (body => bodies), or perhaps "virera", like pondus => pondera (weight => weights) or genus => genera (kind => kinds), depending on the original quality of the final vowel in the stem.

(Originally it would have been visos => visosa, but the final vowel in virus has become closed, while the intervocalic s has become r due to rhotacism.)

You have been thinking at the masculine words whose stem ends in -u, like fructu (fruit), where the singular is fructus and the plural is fructuus. There -s is not part of the stem but it is a marker of the singular masculine nominative case.

In virus and the other neuter nouns that end in -s, the -s is a part of the stem of the word, not a case marker. There are also masculine word where the stem ends in -s, like muus (mouse), in which the -s must also not be confused with the marker of the nominative case that is applied to some of the words with other kinds of stems.

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