I 1. Why do you have two brains? 2. Are they both huge, or just one of them? 3. Why diddidn’t you use either one of them when you answered this question? 4. I hope you know that I’m just joking, don’t get angry. 5. Anyone with two brains would have already known I was just joking.
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This post was edited by Randy D at January 5, 2020 2:51 PM MST
Words in Italian and Romanian regularly use -i as a plural, like "uomini" ("men"), "ragazzi" ("boys"), pomi ("trees" in Romanian). This derives from Latin, which pluralizes second-declension masculine nouns with -i as in "agri" ("fields"), "viri" ("men"), "filii" ("sons"). When English borrows Latin second-declension nouns, we often keep the original Latin plurals, thus we also have "alumnus" and "alumni" and others. This doesn't always happen, of course, as "campus" is from the Latin second-declension, but the English plural is "campuses", not "campi".
Interestingly, "octopus" does not quite fit the bill. It's not in fact a Latin second-declension noun, it's a combination of the Greek word "octo" meaning "eight" and "pous" meaning "foot". The plural of "pous" in Greek is "podes", so really, the plural of "octopus" should be "octopodes". :)