04-08-2014, 06:29 PM
Oy. This is getting bogged down. But, (1) I have read cactus as the plural of cactus, and as a native Texan, it's the standard plural for the folks I know, (2) cacti is a latinization of a non-latin word, so the OED ain't perfect either, (3) it's fine to say MW sucks, but they're not pulling the usage out of their butts, and (4) the whole point of using the plural is that it's weird. It parallels bluefly, bats/fall/spread . . . All of the nested lists are designed . . .
Nm. I took the bait here, instead of taking the edit. Thanks for the note, and I'll look for a write-around. I stopped posting in serious bc I was getting comments like this one--condescending, rude, and not engaged with the content of the poem. Since I'm posting in mild critique, here, I'd appreciate a refrain from comments like "it is surprising you believed it" which is neither mild nor a critique.
Fwiw--Cacti vs. cactuses
. . . Also, like many names of plants, the uninflected cactus is sometimes treated as plural.
http://grammarist.com/usage/cacti-cactuses/
Nm. I took the bait here, instead of taking the edit. Thanks for the note, and I'll look for a write-around. I stopped posting in serious bc I was getting comments like this one--condescending, rude, and not engaged with the content of the poem. Since I'm posting in mild critique, here, I'd appreciate a refrain from comments like "it is surprising you believed it" which is neither mild nor a critique.
Fwiw--Cacti vs. cactuses
. . . Also, like many names of plants, the uninflected cactus is sometimes treated as plural.
http://grammarist.com/usage/cacti-cactuses/