this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (11 children)

If it was possible to start fire under water octopi would have tribal civilizations already.

[–] thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Did you know that the correct pluralization is octopuses or octopoda, not octopi? This is because the -pus ending in octopus to es from the Greek word for foot, not prom latin.

[–] Iunnrais@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

The correct GREEK plural, which would be used because the root of octopus is Greek, could be octopodes. However, in ENGLISH, people have started intuiting that words ending in “~us” pluralize to ~i, akin to cacti. So this isn’t about being a Latin rule, it’s actually an emergent English rule.

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