Plural of virus

In the English language, the plural of "virus" is "viruses".

In reference to a computer virus, the plural is often believed to be virii or, less commonly, viri, but both forms are neologistic folk etymology [Wiktionary definition http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus] and no major dictionary recognizes them as alternative forms (despite the recognition of words like "google" as a verb). These variations, discussed below, are generally used by people in some Internet communities to refer to computer malware of any type, not just self replicating and self distributing forms.

Etymology

"Virus" comes to English from Latin. The Latin word "vīrus" (the "ī" indicates a long "i") means "poison; venom", denoting the venom of a snake. This Latin word is probably related to the Greek polytonic|ἰός ("ios") meaning "venom" or "rust" and the Sanskrit word "visha" meaning "toxic, poison".

Since "vīrus" in antiquity denoted something noncountable, it was a mass noun. Mass nouns — such as "air", "rice", and "helpfulness" in English — pluralize only under special circumstances, hence the nonexistence of plural forms. [June 1999 issue of ASM News by the American Society for Microbiology]

It is unclear how a plural might have been formed under Latin grammar if the word had acquired a meaning requiring a plural form. In Latin "vīrus" is generally regarded as a neuter of the second declension, but neuter second declension nouns ending in "-us" (rather than "-um") are so rare that there are no recorded plurals.The form "vīriī" would not have been a correct plural in Latin, since the ending "-iī" only occurs in the plural of masculine and feminine words ending in "-ius". For instance, take "radius", plural "radiī": the root is "radi-", with the singular ending "-us" and the plural "-ī". Thus the plural "vīriī" would be that of the nonexistent word "vīrius". The form "vīrī" would also be incorrect in Latin. The ending "-ī" is normally used for masculine or feminine nouns, not neuter ones such as "vīrus". In fact there is a Latin word "virī", meaning "men" (the plural of "vir") but it has a short i in the first syllable: the difference in vowel quantity is reflected in the pronunciation of the English word "virile" as opposed to "viral".

Even were the Latin plural known, English does not always use Latin plurals for Latin loanwords ending in -us ("campuses", "bonuses", "anuses"); exceptions include "radii", "alumni" and "corpora" (although "corpuses" is also accepted).

Use of the form "virii"

While the word "viruses" is used in medical and professional literature, the form "virii" remains popular in some Internet communities. There may be several reasons for the use of this word even when it is known to be unusual.

Leet-speak is the name given to variations on languages where frequent intentional misspellings are common, even using numbers and symbols to replace the letters of a word. These languages developed in an environment where plaintext occurrences of certain words were bound to attract unwanted attention; the tradition of intentional, sometimes flashy, misspellings originated as a way of communicating semi-steganographically on bulletin boards.

The creation of plural forms by tongue-in-cheek stretching of English plural 'rules' is popular among hackers, sometimes as a way of marking a term as community jargon. See and mouses for the most visible examples. Other examples, whether widely used or not, are easily recognized and deciphered, and it is well understood that these irregular (or hyper-regular) plurals are not errors but examples of geek humor.

More recently, the word "virii" has appeared in the 2008 Nintendo DS game Puchi Puchi Virus as a term to describe the multi-colored Virus infestations that the player has to destroy. The term is used throughout the game.

Notes

References

*cite web | accessdaymonth=19 February | accessyear=2007|author=Rob Rosenberger|url=http://vmyths.com/fas/fas.pdf|title=Computer Viruses and False Authority Syndrome |work=Virus Myths
*cite web | accessdaymonth=2 January | accessyear=2005|url=http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?viruses|work=Free On-line Dictionary of Computing|title=virus
*cite web | accessdaymonth=2 January | accessyear=2005|url=http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?viruses|work=The On-line Medical Dictionary|title=virus
*cite web | accessdaymonth=2 January | accessyear=2005|author=Eric S. Raymond|url=http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/overgeneralization.html|title=Jargon Construction: Overgeneralization|work=The Jargon File — a discussion of the playful use of grammar among hackers