walrii

English

Etymology

From walrus +‎ -ii, in imitation of Latin nominative plural forms of nouns ending in ius. Compare fetii and penii.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: wôlʹrĭī, IPA(key): /ˈwɔːlɹɪaɪ/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

walrii

  1. (nonstandard, proscribed, rare) Misconstructed plural form of walrus.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:walrii.

Usage notes

  • The plural form walrii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, walrus derives from Danish, not Latin. Secondly, even if walrus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be walri; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which walrii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of the words’ stems (radi- and gladi-), and not their case endings — for walrii to be the plural, *walrius would need to be the singular.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.