> virii
Pet peeve of mine, but it looks like you slept through English class as well. The plural of "virus" in English is "viruses". "virus" in latin is a mass word and has no plural, like "sugar" and "air".
Pet peeve of mine, but it looks like you slept through English class as well. The plural of "virus" in English is "viruses". "virus" in latin is a mass word and has no plural, like "sugar" and "air".
Anyway, this is hackernews.
For those of us who grew up in internet hacking communities of the early 90's "virii" was the plural form in the lingua franca. As a descriptivist of great habit, I will continue to use that form.
How about this argument then: "virii" is f*ckin ugly? No? Darn. :-)
Just because a noun is a mass word in one language, it doesn't mean it has to be in other languages that have borrowed the word.
For example, in my language, "lego" is a mass word, and to make a plural you would have to say something like "pieces of lego", but in English, the plural of "lego" is "legos".