AGREEABLE AND ABOMINABLE PLURALISATIONS
‘Pus’, the ancient Greek for ‘foot’ gives us my undisputed favourite of pluralisations. The plural of ‘pus’ being ‘podes’, the plural of octopus (eight-footed beast), is therefore octopodes. What a crying shame that we have degraded that to the wholly unpoetic ‘octopuses’, or misappropriated a Latinate plural in ‘octopi’.
I bemoan the fact we don’t have many boys and men named Oedipus (swollen foot – admittedly not very heroic). But imagine if you knew more than one? You would have to refer to them as The Oedipodes. Sounds like rather a fine name for a boy band too.
My least favourite? The apostrophised plural is indisputably at the top of the list (Shall we have pea's with our meal, or carrot's?), but a close second is the pluralisation of a word that is already plural such as the adopted ‘panini’, rendering it ‘paninis’, or, to compound that, ‘panini’s’! I must take some comfort in the fact I have not (yet) seen ‘paninnies’, or its even less palatable cousin, ‘paninnie’s’.
Yours
Susan McKenna