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October 11, 2002

Strange But True!

Q. When you pluralize in English, giraffe becomes giraffes, fungus fungi or funguses, bacterium bacteria. Mouse becomes mice, except for the mouses at Compu-Mart. So what do you do with platypus, mongoose and octopus?

A. When platypus meets platypus, they make platypuses, not platypi. Mongooses may not sound right, but mongeese sounds worse (and wrong). A guy, wanting a pair of them, cagily faxed: "Send me one mongoose; then send me another."


 
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