| 词组 | octopus |
| 释义 | octopus Do you know what the plural of octopus is? Three receive mention: octopuses, octopodes, octopi. But only octopuses and octopi are in use. The OED gives octopodes as the first plural (octopuses as the alternative), but the OED also enters octopus with double bars as a foreign word. The OED has only one plural example, for octopuses, dated 1884. Octopi is attacked from time to time as improper, chiefly by those who know (or have been told) that a plural formed on the Greek would be octopodes. Octopus, however, is not directly imported from the Greek; it comes from New Latin, which took it from the Greek oktopous. Octopi is, however, irregularly formed—on analogy, we suppose, with the plurals of other Latin nouns of the second declension (like alumnus). The history of these plurals in English shows octopuses the oldest, starting with the OED's 1884 example. Octopi first turned up in our files in 1922. The editors of Webster's Second had exactly the same number of citations for octopi and octopuses, and from about the same kinds of sources, so they included both, along with the OED's octopodes. The citations gathered for the books published after Webster's Second show octopuses slightly more popular than octopi. Several publications—Time, the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and publications of the Smithsonian Institution, for instance—have used both plurals. Citations gathered since the publication of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1983) show octopuses continuing to increase its edge over octopi. So the evidence to date shows that octopuses is gaining in frequency of use, and that octopi is dropping back but is still a respectable second. Octopodes is a non-starter: we have no evidence of its use in context. If neither of the live plurals is your cup of tea, you can always take the way out used by a timid writer of a ninth-grade text: "chitons, the squids and the octopus tribe." |
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