viruses
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What is the plural of virus? |
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Contrary to popular opinion, the plural of virus is not virii. Nor is it viri, vira, or virae. It is viruses. |
Here are some typical examples of the incorrect plural form of virus:
Virii Generators: Understanding the Threat — "For those security professionals charged with ... defending against virii attacks, it is vital that there is a proper understanding of the threats which breed in the world. In the realm of virii, one of the vital understandings must concern virii generators ..."
Dark Angel's Phunky Virus Writing Guide — "Virii are wondrous creations written for the sole purpose of spreading and destroying the systems of unsuspecting fools. ... This guide will show you what it takes to write a virus and also will give you a plethora of source code to include in your own virii."
Virii and Bacteria — A list of recommended books by amazon.com Listmania contributor Andrew Vessey, a robotics programmer.
Top Ten Virii — A list by Orthus Ltd., a professional information security services provider in the United Kingdom.
Viri the Witch — "... it's pronounced VIHree, not like the plural of 'virus'."
So, what do the experts say about the plural form of virus? One popular on-line reference has this usage note:
True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, man, the root the English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus.
Another clue comes from Dr. Jeannine Horowitz of the Univeristy of Haifa, who posted the following comment on a message board:
Neither feminine "virae", nor masculine gendered "viri",
virus ... is neutral and has normally no plural, just like vulgus.
Copyright © 2002 Jenny Horowitz
Author Tom Christiansen has written what is probably the most thorough on-line article on the plural form of virus. Here's an excerpt:
Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular, not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.
Copyright © 1999 Tom Christiansen
Other sources that give viruses as the plural form are:
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
The alt.usage.english FAQ file
Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC) Index
Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing
On-Line Medical Dictionary of the University of Newcastle
An example of both correct and incorrect usage is the pseudo-Latin phrase "viri sunt viri" which is intended to mean "men are slime".
Curiously, the doubly absurd plural form virii (with two trailing i's) is more prevalant on the net than the single -i form. The form virii implies a singular form virius, which is clearly not the case. Christiansen observes that virii is "completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie."
Here are some examples of the proper use of viri:
IUS Primi Viri is an international association for human rights.
The Ascension Mass (a Gregorian chant) begins with "Viri Galilaei", which means literally "Men of Galilaei".
Viri Galilaei is the name of a prestigious choir (see also).
From a Zenit news item, "Father James Gould, Apostolic Prefect of the Marshall Islands, believes that the crisis in vocations could be overcome by considering "mature men" (viri probati) for the priesthood."
In any case, none of the preceding commentary has anything to do with the acronym for Visual Information Retrieval Interfaces.
