WOTD: Pluralis

Todays word is a rare yet important one, which can be used to describe that small percentage of the population who just insists on being right. You know who you are ;)

By an amazing coincidence, its plural form is also a perfect example of itself. By an another amazing coincidence, it's already Sunday, but that hasn't stopped me from pretending it isn't in the past.

Hence, the Word of the Day for Saturday, August 13, 2005 is:

pluralis
n. pl. pluralithetses

1. A word which has an extremely unintuitive and nonsensical plural form: Octopus is a pluralis. The only people who actually know its correct plural form are either locked up in their ivory tower, or busy having arguments with people who just do what everyone else does and say "octopi".


2. A person who is extremely adamant that people must express words in correct latin plural form, or be shot: "You guys are such pluralises [sic]!" "No we aren't! And besides, the plural of pluralis is pluralithetses, ass!"


3. In computer science, the name given to a set of data which isn't an array, list, tuple, stack, queue, vector or collection, but which computer scientists still feel needs some advanced and mysterious name to describe it:

   Pluralis n = new Pluralis(k);