Talk:platypus

It doesn't matter if the platypus is an Australian animal and ALL Australian references say that the plural is platypi (I doubt it, BTW). 'Platypi' is still a hypercorrection. Pretension is OK, but being simultaneously pretentious and wrong is a bad combination, IMHO.

Regardless of what any US dictionaries or other references might say, the Platypus is an Australian animal and ALL Australian references say that the plural of Platypus, is Platypi.

Ginkgo is a Chinese plant, but that doesn't mean we all have to call it yínxìng.

Besides, what you say isn't it true. My Macquarie Dictionary gives platypuses first, followed by platypi. --Ptcamn 13:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Only one plural form?

Platypodes should really appear along side platypuses as a legitmate plural form. It may be pedantic and/or pretentious, but it is correct. Doremítzwr 11:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it should not; platypi is the English common back-construction, while platypodes is astoundingly rare. You can put a prescriptive note in the =Usage notes= section (with references) saying what language authorities dictate it should be formed with Greek construction rules, but prescriptive Wiktionary should list the English plurals normally formed. --Connel MacKenzie 15:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a usage note, but Stephen G. Brown deleted it (heaven only knows why). I was personally in favour of retaining platypi as a plural form (with an explanatory usage note explaining its etymological incorrectness), but someone (I forget who) removed it. Now we have platypoda, of which I have never heard. Anyway, I’m going to readd platypodes (I refer you to the linked-to Wikipedia article), and resurrect the usage notes, until an adequate reason is given why I ought not to do so. Doremítzwr 17:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. --Connel MacKenzie 17:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. Is what I’ve written OK? Now the word has five plural forms! Doremítzwr 17:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

As explained in the Wikipedia article, some scientists like to use platypoda. As for platypodes, the Wikipedia article does not support it (unless I missed something), but says that it would be the correct plural, meaning that that’s what the plural would be if those who first began to use the word also knew Greek. Platypi is the standard plural in Australia, and platypuses is the U.S. plural. I do not know what the British prefer, but I doubt that it’s platypodes. —Stephen 17:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Since you’ve been so insistant about this, I went to the trouble of checking further. The Random House and American Heritage dictionaries do not accept platypodes; I don’t have access to the OED, but I’d bet it’s not accepted there either. On Wikipedia, on the page w:English plural, it states as follows:

The Greek plural for words ending in -pus (gr. poûs) meaning "foot", such as octopus and platypus, is -podes, but this plural is rare for octopus and has never been accepted for platypus. —Stephen 17:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

According to this website, the Australian OED lists platypodes as a plural form; I do not have access to this resource, does anyone care to check? Doremítzwr 18:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm the author of the page that you link to in the previous line. I investigated this when I was in Australia in 2003. I visited a bookshop and looked it up in the Aus OED. Here it what I wrote at the time: What do you say if you have more than one platypus? On Uncle Brian's trip a slightly irritating American guy insisted that the plural of platypus is platypi. "What rubbish", I thought, but he insisted that he must be right because he's a professional writer. (Actually he works in advertising.) So I've looked it up in the Oxford Australian Dictionary, and it's the same as octopus, not surprisingly. The ending -pus is from the Greek word for foot, and in greek the plural of pus is podes. So if you insist on using an original-language plural form it should be platypodes and octopodes. The plural form -pi is from Latin. Stick with the obvious octopuses and platypuses, I reckon. — This unsigned comment was added by 86.6.8.194 (talk) at 14:48, 19 April 2007‎.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the common plural form is platypuses, and the rare form is platypodes. The entry at https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14545 is where you can see it. The etymology is Hellenistic Greek πλατύπους flat-footed from ancient Greek πλατυ- platy- comb. form + πούς foot, owing to -pod combined form.

In 1799, George Shaw proposed the scientific Latin genus name in the first recorded usage of the word on page 386 in Vivarium Naturæ, or Naturalist’s Miscellany "The Platypus is a native of Australia or New Holland, and is at present in the possession of Mr. Dobson, so much distinguished by his exquisite manner of preparing specimens of vegetable anatomy."

The plural form platypi is conjecture formed by analogy with Latin nouns of the second declension ending in -us, but the plural form platypodes is after Hellenistic Greek πλατύποδες, plural of πλατύπους, which is the etymological origin of the word. The plural form octopodes reflects the Greek plural. The plural octopi is a conjecture that arises from apprehension of the final -us of the word as the grammatical ending of Latin second declension nouns. Taric25 (talk) 23:37, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

If scientists use platypoda, then why can't I find any quotations for it? --Ptcamn 09:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It’s certainly uncommon, but you can find a few here. I believe platypoda is sometimes used for the species, but it is not used as a plural for individual animals. —Stephen 13:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

They all seem to be examples of a different Latin word platypoda, referring to a plant. --Ptcamn 13:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Platypoda is a proposed order that would include genera of creatures similar to platypuses; platypoda is feminine nominative of platypodus, a specific epithet. When used in taxonomy, platypi seems to be used to create a name that is obviously related to platypus, but distinct so as to avoid confusion. There seems to be a genus Platypi of beetles.

Platypi does seem to be attestable as plural of platypus, sometimes in usage as: "a visit to one of the few platypuses (platypi?) in captivity." (in The Coast of Coral, Arthur C. Clarke!), but more often just as the (apparently obvious-to-the-author) plural of platypus in many kinds of works, even scholarly works. DCDuring (talk) 00:49, 19 February 2021 (UTC)