Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 27, 2005 07:00 PM
Virus comes from the latin word meaning slime. It's in a class of words for which there is no plural (slime is just slime and it never occurred to anyone that you would want to count 1 slime, 2 slimes, etc).
Even were you to use the wrong latin rule for making a plural, you would get virus -> viri. You wouldn't ever go -us (singular) to -ii (plural). Gladius, a sword, does have a plural gladii, though note the extra i in the singular form (-ius to -ii).
There is no "virii" that gets special treatment in medical or computer terminology.
All that's left is to use the English rule for forming the plural.
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Re:Virii
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 27, 2005 07:00 PMEven were you to use the wrong latin rule for making a plural, you would get virus -> viri. You wouldn't ever go -us (singular) to -ii (plural).
Gladius, a sword, does have a plural gladii, though note the extra i in the singular form (-ius to -ii).
There is no "virii" that gets special treatment in medical or computer terminology.
All that's left is to use the English rule for forming the plural.
So the plural of virus is viruses.
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