• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Good. They deserve it. Octopuses are dicks. They keep demanding you to call “octopi.” Sure. When you start calling me and my homies squidi, I’ll start calling you guys octopi.

    But no, they can’t see past their octopus privilege. As if having two fewer arms made them superior.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Octopi is the oldest plural form of octopus, coming from the belief that Latin origins should have Latin endings. However, octopus is not a simple Latin word, but a Latinized form of the Greek word októpus. Consequently, its “correct” plural form would logically be octopodes.

      Nowadays “octopodes” and octopuses" are both acceptable, the latter being more regularly used.

      “Squid” on the other hand isn’t Latin or Greek, of unknowns origin, probably from a sailor’s variant of “squirt”; late 15c., squirten, squyrten “to spit water from the mouth” (intransitive), a word of uncertain origin, perhaps via Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, probably ultimately imitative.