🚀 go-pugleaf

About two weeks ago I wrote:

|A shallow survey of latin reveals the following information:
|
|Singular    vir     vis         virus
|Plural      viri    vires       virus
|Meaning     man     power,force poison,venom
|
|Therefore the correct plural of virus is.... virus. In order to avoid
|confusion I suggest that 'viruses' be used (the English plural of virus).

A quick email response from rlee@ads.com (Richard Lee) convinced me that
this is not the complete truth. I consulted my former Latin teacher and
we reached the following verdict:

1. Virus belongs to the 4th declension and its gens is neutrum, even
   though it ends in -us.
2. Virus only exists in the nominativus and accusativus singularis,
   and has no genitivus (though late Latin writers started to use
   a genitivus ending in -us), nor a plural.
3. If virus were to have a plural it would definitely be virus,
   but again it hasn't.

From this information I draw the following conclusions:

1. I was wrong about the Latin plural of virus.
2. My suggestion to use viruses still holds.
3. The fact that there is no Latin plural of virus explains why
   all modern languages have their own (usually regular) plural
   of the word.

-Roger Hunen

Disclaimer #1 : My opinions are my own, and not even known to my employer.
Disclaimer #2 : My opinions are better than my typing.