Re: CHAT: Worse Greek 102 (was: Bad Latin 101)

At 1:09 am +0100 2/2/01, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
[....]
>>       "Viri" (or doubly illiterate
>> "virii"),
>
>The latter form has always puzzled me.  _Viri_ is understandable, from
>thinking it's an o-stem,
Actually it is an o-stem.  It's one of the few _neuters_ which, like
_uulgus_ (multitude, the people) and _pelagus_ (sea), have their nominative
& accusatives in -us.  The genitive is _uiri_ and the dative & ablative are
_uiro_.

But the word is mass noun, not a countable noun, in Latin and meant: slime;
poison; venom

AFAIK a plural is not found in Classical Latin, but there is no reason to
suppose it would be other than _uira_, or _vira_ in the modern spelling.

>but whence the second _i_ in _virii_?  This
>would require an underlying singular form _**virius_.
It is, as John said, _doubly_ illiterate.  _viri_ is singularly illiterate
as the plural of _virus_ since it is _masculine_ plural and means 'men'
(adult males); _vir-i-i_ (to split it up into morphemes) is thus _doubly_
illiterate since not only does the word have the incorrect ending added
twice, the result is meaningless.

AFAIK the word does not seem to be used over here except among the most
nurdish of geeks.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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