Moon platypuses?

[Missing]

What's the plural of moon platypus?

[everywhere and nowhere]

"Platypi" is not a correct plural. The Latin plural of "platypus" is "platypodes", not "platypi". Not everything which ends with an "-us" is a second-declension noun with "-i" ending in plural! So, "platypuses" in English is just fine. (The same goes for "octopus".)

Some people think that English plurals are not sophisticated enough and prefer to use Latin plurals of words borrowed from Latin, but really, isn't it kinda embarassing to insist on using Latin plurals - and then fail to produce a correct Latin form?...

[Fraggle Underdark]

Actually from my reading, the Latin plural would be moon platypi, except that the word is not Latin but Greek, and the Greek way to form a plural is with -es. (And platypodes would be a Greek plural, though it would literally translate as 'flat feet' rather than platypu(o)s which is 'flat foot' and we probably want to say 'flat foots' in the case of multiple creatures - one platypus already has more than one foot!)

[a little annihilation]

there is only one and she dances in the moonlight every night in her river kingdom

[everywhere and nowhere]

By the way, here's a text from the Straight Dope on foreign-language plurals in English:

What is the plural of "penis"?

[Guest]

 

[Fraggle Underdark]

1 hour ago, everywhere and nowhere said:

By the way, here's a text from the Straight Dope on foreign-language plurals in English:

What is the plural of "penis"?

This was extremely interesting and I learned several things I never knew. Foremost is that most of the English words of Greek origin were borrowed through Latin, which I've confirmed through looking specifically for this question but it's curious I didn't come across this fact before. Second is just how practically impossible it is to correctly guess the Latin or Greek plural of a word, specifically if one also wants it to be accepted English.

 

Thank you for sharing this.