From: Michele Andreoli (m.andreoli@tin.it)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 17:55:29 CEST
On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 05:27:26PM +0200, Gerrit Lammert wrote:
> Hi Michele.
>
> Am 13.10.2002 um 17:14 schrieb mir Michele Andreoli:
> >Really! "virus" is from latin and means, originally, "poison".
> >In latin, the plural is "virii", but english-speaking uses "viruses".
>
> Are you sure about virii?
> I thought the plural of -us is -i, so it should be viri, with a single i.
>
True. If "virus" is belong the 2th declension, we have virus/viri. But
I noticed that english mother tongue use "virii" and I do not know
if this is an exception, or either virus is belong 4th declension, like
fructus-fructus-fructui ... etc.
Sorry, I have no latin grammar with me.
To be honest, I found on Internet that virus mean poison, but I always
believed that is was from "vis, viris", that in latin means "strength,force".
I'm not sure.
But I'm sure that Alfie Costa is now searching the right answer for us.
We have just to wait a little, and Alfie will post here
a lot of etimological material about "virus" etc ... :-)
Michele
-- "Physics is like sex: it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it" (Richard Feynman) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mulinux-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk For additional commands, e-mail: mulinux-help@sunsite.dk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Sat Feb 08 2003 - 15:27:23 CET