On a lighter note:

Having observed in passing the references in the MSM to “Paul the Octopus” predicting the World Cup outcome, this item from an e-mail correspondent caught my attention for some reason. (Maybe because it makes more sense that what’s coming out of Congress and the White House these days!)

Let’s say you are swimming in the ocean and you see some 8-legged cephalopods. You say to your friend, “Hey, I saw a group of octopuses” and your friend says, “Hey, you’re an ignorant slob. You saw a group of octopi.” So, is it octopuses or octopi?

Well, octopus first showed up in the English language in the mid 1700’s. It was given the standard English plural, octopuses. There was a movement afoot at the time to make English less irregular by making it more like Latin, which is nice and even and predictable. So, these grammarians took a bunch of the Latin-based words in English that end in “us” like octopus, and gave them classical Latin plural endings. Enter octopi, the “correct” plural of octopus. There’s one problem. Octopus isn’t Latin. It’s in fact, ultimately from Greek. That’s OK. Some smarter grammarians figured this out and gave octopus the Greek ending it needed, and hence we have octopodes, which is pretty rare and appears only in British English. They all forgot one thing. Whenever a word from a foreign language enters English, it becomes an English word and it’s inflected just like other English words. So, octopuses was just fine.

So what does this mean for you? If you say octopuses, you can continue to do so without fearing that you are an ignorant slob. If you say octopi you can continue to do so. But, realize you have no grounds to tell the people who say octopuses that they are ignorant slobs. And if you say octopodes, you’d better be prepared to deliver this spiel at a moment’s notice, and with a British accent.

(From “Ask the Editor”, Merriam-Webster.com)

So, where does “Octopussy” fit into this scheme of things? Must be a problem for 007 to solve!