On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Nigel Horne wrote: > On Wednesday 28 Jul 2004 10:38, Andrzej Kukula wrote: > > > Neither Miriam-Webster nor Cambridge list plural form of 'virus'. But > > there's simple rule to make plurals in English: append 's' to a noun, and if > > the noun ends in 's', then append 'es'. Or I'm missing something. > > I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this seriously OT subject, > but I need to point out that adding 's' / 'es' doesn't always work, especially > for words derived directly from Latin/Greek.
Language is a mess, especially since it's defined by current usage. That's something that those who speak Latin (a dead language) don't seem to understand. If enough people say "virii" then it really doesn't matter what the supporters of a dead language say. *shrug* As another fun example to add to the mix, there's the plural of fish: a school of the same species of fish is "fish". But if there are many species it becomes "fishes". Go figure. As a personal aside, I still insist that the plural of mouse depends on whether it's a mammal (mice) or a pointing device (mouses). But that's a flamewar for another list. ;) Damian Menscher -- -=#| Physics Grad Student & SysAdmin @ U Illinois Urbana-Champaign |#=- -=#| 488 LLP, 1110 W. Green St, Urbana, IL 61801 Ofc:(217)333-0038 |#=- -=#| 4602 Beckman, VMIL/MS, Imaging Technology Group:(217)244-3074 |#=- -=#| <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www.uiuc.edu/~menscher/ Fax:(217)333-9819 |#=- -=#| The above opinions are not necessarily those of my employers. |#=- ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by BEA Weblogic Workshop FREE Java Enterprise J2EE developer tools! Get your free copy of BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 today. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=4721&alloc_id=10040&op=click _______________________________________________ Clamav-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/clamav-users
