The current champion in the Battle of Troublesome Pluralization is octopus, which, depending on which dictionary is consulted, may be written in three different ways: octopi, octopuses, and octopodes. Rule of thumb: if English gets the opportunity to trip you up, it will. And just to keep people on their toes, certain words of Latin extraction may be pluralized with either English or Latin endings: multiple stadium may be either stadia or stadiums. Thus, the plural of bacterium is bacteria, rather than bacteriums. However, sometimes words will come into English and keep an ending from their original language, particularly if that original language is Latin. Our language takes words from a wide variety of sources generally when a noun enters into English it is pluralized as an English word, rather than in its native form. One of the most effective of these is a method of pluralization that generally follows a set of rules, but occasionally behaves unpredictably.

There are many ways that English manages to trip up its speakers, both native and non-native.

Lastly, octopodes stemmed from the belief that because octopus is originally Greek, it should have a Greek ending. Octopuses was the next plural, giving the word an English ending to match its adoption as an English word. Octopi is the oldest plural of octopus, coming from the belief that words of Latin origin should have Latin endings.

The three plurals for octopus come from the different ways the English language adopts plurals.

What are plural