Subject: [ASRG] 0. General - Etymology trivia: "virus"

From: Brett Watson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 12:47:24 +1100

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:51:55 +0100, Markus Stumpf observed:
> I don't know if I am a "k00l VXdudez", but I had 5 years of Latin in
> school and the correct plural of "virus" is "viri" (not "viruses" and
> in no way "virii" ;-). The plural form was very rarely used in written
> text, so some people say is doesn't have one in Latin, which is wrong.

Disclosure: I had only four years of high school Latin, and I was bad at it. 
Caveat lector.

"Virus" is, in fact, derived from the Latin "virus", meaning "poison" (and 
some similar unpleasant substances). It appears to be in the same declension 
as "radius", where the nominative singular takes the "us" inflection, and the 
plural takes an "i" inflection. Thus, the Latin plural of "virus" would be 
"viri", just as "radius" becomes "radii" (the "i" being doubled there because 
it was also present in the singular).

As to why we've abandoned the Latinate plural in English in favour of 
"viruses", I don't know. ("Radiuses" is also a common plural variant for 
"radius", I note.) Perhaps it could be blamed on the fact that we've adopted 
a fairly specific meaning for "virus" in English which is not the same as its 
Latin meaning, so the word has been co-opted rather than incorporated. The 
term "virus" was adopted in the first instance because researchers thought 
they had found a new form of fluid toxin, which later turned out to be a 
misconception. [http://library.thinkquest.org/23054/basics/page3.html 
(Warning: site appears to have annoying referer URL behaviour preventing 
direct linking, so additional navigation may be necessary.)]

Language is weird.

We now return you to your regular ASRG arguments.

Regards,
TFBW

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From: Mark <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 02:41:41 GMT

> text, so some people say is doesn't have one in Latin, which is wrong.

I remember it differently. :)

The Latin "virus" is of a rare form (2nd declension neuter nouns in -us),
and begot its "us" ending probably because, in its meaning of venom, it is
cognate to the Greek "ios" = poison. Neuters of the 2nd declension have no
plural. Which would make "viruses" the correct English plural.

I am open to evidence to the contrary, of course.

- Mark

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From: "Hector Santos" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 22:54:41 -0500

I think it may be important to understand in which context it is presented.
Coming from a Chemical Engineering background,  I recall the usage of the
word "viri" as the plural of a virus to the hard core anal retentive
scientist in a presentation to other scientist.  To the layman and the
common usage, viruses is used,

Similarly, in my mail business experience for the last ~20 years across many
different environments,  I was often challenged to use the word "fora" as
the plural of "forums" in a technical context.  But in the layman context,
it is far more meaningful to have in your support
conversations/documentation:

                "To create forums, go to ............."

rather than say:

                "To create a fora, go to ............."

Imagine if the IETF has on their web site:

                "The IETF offers the following standards fora:"

The layman might see that to mean a singular public discussion area, when in
fact it means "forums"

Same ergonomic considerations are made today with virus and viruses vs.
viri.  I doubt Anti-Virus software vendors will have marketing material
saying: "Our software is designed to protected you from viri." <g>

-- Hector