Re: Viruses, viri or virii? Was: Macs don't have viruses?

From: kurt wismer (kurtw_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 09/27/03 

Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 20:50:10 -0400

Chris Mattern wrote:

> Nigel Blatheringstock wrote:
>
>>
>> Personally, I believe that "viri" is correct in a classical sense, that
>> "viruses" is a defencible modern alternative, and that "virii" has
>> scant basis in either Latin or English conventions.
>
>
> No. Virus is neuter--it's a one of like about three weird neuter
> second-declension nouns where the nominative and accusative singular
> ends in -us instead of -um. So the nominative (and accusative)
> plural would be "vira". Took me a little while to figure out how
> to use the Perseus's morphology tool to confirm this, but this is
> right. Perseus (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/) is an amazing tool
> for this sort of thing.

uh huh... and babelfish can translate my posts into grammatically
correct hungarian...

tools are useful, but they're not always right... see
http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html for a discussion on the
correct plural for virus... 

--
"hungry people don't stay hungry for long
  they get hope from fire and smoke as the weak grow strong
  hungry people don't stay hungry for long
  they get hope from fire and smoke as they reach for the dawn"

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