An octopus is a sea animal with a soft round body and eight long arms called tentacles.
 |
| photo credit wikipedia |
Octopi, the supposed plural of octopus, is a favourite among fans of quirky words, but it has no etymological basis.
The form was created by English speakers out of a mistaken belief that octopus is Latin and hence pluralised with an -i ending. But octopus comes from ancient Greek, where its plural is octopodes, and though it came to English via scientific Latin - one of the late varieties of Latin that kept the language alive long after it had died out as a first language - it was never a native Latin word and didn’t exist in that language until scientists borrowed it from Greek in the 18th century (and if it were a Latin word, it would take a different form and would not be pluralised with the -i ending).
The form was created by English speakers out of a mistaken belief that octopus is Latin and hence pluralised with an -i ending. But octopus comes from ancient Greek, where its plural is octopodes, and though it came to English via scientific Latin - one of the late varieties of Latin that kept the language alive long after it had died out as a first language - it was never a native Latin word and didn’t exist in that language until scientists borrowed it from Greek in the 18th century (and if it were a Latin word, it would take a different form and would not be pluralised with the -i ending).
Level: B2/C1
