So I shared my notes about the plural of octopus and circus with my Dull Men’s Clubmates. Christiano Belloni got pretty serious with it. (Or is he full of Belloni?) —
1) octopus is also the word in Latin, third declension (octopus, octopodis). Plural of the third declension ends in -es, so it would be octopodes, *which is still a latin word*. Octopi follows the wrong assumption that octopus is a second declension word (since most words ending in -us at their nominative are second declension) and it’s incorrect even in Latin.
2) Greek plural would be oktopodes, with a “k” (that doesn’t exist in Latin)
3) pluralisation of foreign words follows the host language rules, so it’s octopuses.
But this comment by Paul Clark was my fave: “I usually say ‘bring me an octopus’ then ‘sorry, make that two’ just to be on the safe side…..”
Richard Barley wondered how you would pluralize a Ford Focus (Foci?) and Belloni explained you’d used the pluralization method of the host language, English here, so it would be Focuses. To which I replied:
Yes, but if you have two Focuses and they both break down you can just say you’re out of Focus.
Here’s Belloni:
He’s funny. Posted this separately:
The iconic Star Trek line “Beam me up Scottie” was never actually said in the original series or any of the movies based on it. Sort of like “Play it again, Sam” never said in Casablanca. But the beaming business was at the core of today’s impressive NYTXW.
THE ENTERPRISE snaked its way across the top in shaded letters, along with MISTER SCOTT running across. Then quotes from six of the characters (Kirk, Spock, Uhura, etc.) ran down the grid with their names working upward within the quotes in circles, as if being beamed up. Pretty amazing IMO and I managed to complete the puzzle even though I am not a trekkie.
For our Dirty Old Man Dept, the clue at 13D was “Way back?” and the answer was UNDOBUTTON. Phil came up with these for us:
Okay, but where are you, Phil? Just get out of there, let her go, and get back. We already have George in jail. We spoke to you about basements and attics before. Please try to be a little less deranged. Watch normal people and try to pretend you are one of them.
In case you want to see what the woman who wrote this poem looks like, here is Diane Lockward.
She’s a former English teacher at Millburn HS, not far from Owl Chatter headquarters. The poem is called “My Husband Discovers Poetry” and it’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac. I don’t know what to make of it, but that’s not unusual for me. Duh.
Because my husband would not read my poems,
I wrote one about how I did not love him.
In lines of strict iambic pentameter,
I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor.
It felt good to do this.
Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder.
Towards the end, struck by inspiration,
I wrote about my old boyfriend,
a boy I had not loved enough to marry
but who could make me laugh and laugh.
I wrote about a night years after we parted
when my husband’s coldness drove me from the house
and back to my old boyfriend.
I even included the name of a seedy motel
well-known for hosting quickies.
I have a talent for verisimilitude.
In sensuous images, I described
how my boyfriend and I stripped off our clothes,
got into bed, and kissed and kissed,
then spent half the night telling jokes,
many of them about my husband.
I left the ending deliberately ambiguous,
then hid the poem away
in an old trunk in the basement.
You know how this story ends,
how my husband one day loses something,
goes into the basement,
and rummages through the old trunk,
how he uncovers the hidden poem
and sits down to read it.
But do you hear the strange sounds
that floated up the stairs that day,
the sounds of an animal, its paw caught
in one of those traps with teeth of steel?
Do you see the wounded creature
at the bottom of the stairs,
his shoulders hunched over and shaking,
fist in his mouth and choking back sobs?
It was my husband paying tribute to my art.
The most frequent complaint we get from readers is that we don’t pay sufficient attention to the Jewish fast days. Guilty as charged! So let’s note by way of closing that today was Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av. It’s the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, marking the two times the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The second saddest day, of course, was when Sandy Koufax retired.
My Tisha B’Av memories are sorta sweet. My parents sent me to a Hebrew-speaking summer camp for six summers. Massad. And I remember gathering in the assembly hall the night before Tisha B’Av and sitting around on the floor in the dark with a candle in a potato in front of each of us. That we didn’t burn down the place was truly a miracle. Apparently, someone sat around that day with a paring knife digging out a hole in an enormous number of potatoes big enough to hold the base of a candle. This photo is the closest I could come. The candles in Massad, if memory serves, were those white sabbath candles.
Hope you had a good day, Chatterheads. See you next time!
The Wellington Files 