« A General Point | Main | 100% » Priusi?15 Dec 2007 03:15 pm
I recommend that you read the entirety of John Quiggin's post on achieving emissions reductions in the tourism sector. Also this post. But for the short term, I'd like to draw attention to one of its more trivial aspects: "BTW, what is the plural of Prius?" Inquiriting minds want to know. Photo by Flickr user Mstorz used under a Creative Commons license Comments (32)
The correct answer is: Priora (Explanation: prius is the neuter sing. of the comparative adjective prior, whose plural is priora.) (Caveat: I'm assuming Prius is a Latin word, not a product of pure advertiserese.) 
I visited the Oracle of All Knowledge, Google, and I found this:
Well, assuming that Prius is a neuter word, and that it's the nominative singular form, it would probably be third declension, and the plural would then be "Priuses."
I'm pretty sure the plural is either priapic or peoria.
"Romanes eunt domus" -- People called "Romanes" they go the house?
Prions.
Plural of Prius = Suburban
Pricks?
Yikes! There's some really misremembered Latin floating around here. There are 3 types of Latin nouns that end in -us. The first, and by far the most common, are second declension nouns that take the plural in -i. (alumnus, alumni is one that we're all familiar with.) Then there are the 3rd declension neuter such as opus, whose plural is opera. Lastly, there are the 4th declension nouns (manus) whose plural is also -us. Thus, if we are to pretend that 'prius' is a Latin word, 'prii', 'priera' and 'prius' would all be possible plurals.
The Sophist - Whoa! I suppose I might have forgotten all my Latin since my last day of teaching Latin 1, Latin 11, and Latin 32 on Tuesday, but it's not likely. Bottom line: El Cid's post is right. 'Prius' already IS a Latin word; and its plural is Priora. "Prii, Priera, Prius"? Uh, sure, whatever you say.
Another pro chiming in here -- it's got to be Priora. The fourth declension theory is bollocks -- the vast majority of 4th declension nouns -- cursus, exitus, gradus, e.g. -- are of verbal origin, which just about scuppers Priūs as a plausible plural. My personal Internet plural peeve is 'penii' for the plural of 'penis'. I spent the Clenis era fighting against it -- in vain -- over on Salon's TableTalk boards back in the free-to-post days.
What Davis said. Of course, if Prius is pure advertiserese, then the plural could well be Wu Tang Clan, or Hummanhummanahummana. That's the beauty of made-up words. We could even specify a possessive form: Yugo, for example.
Lampwick and Mr. Ex Machina are correct. El Cid in the end is not, unfortunately. The rest of you, Jesus H. Christ, stop it with the over-confident, dim-witted pig Latin. I've never seen so many amateurs say so many stupid things with such conviction as people do about Latin or the Romans or the Greeks. (Like the MIT-trained physicist who told a room full of people last night in my presence that Tiberius was the third emperor of Rome). Lampwick, re-read El Cid's Boston.com article.
Oh, good point about the third declension neuter. I made a leetle mistake..."Priuses" would require the car to be either a boy or a girl...if neuter it would in fact be "Pria"...
Lampwick and Mr. Ex Machina are correct. El Cid in the end is not, unfortunately. For the record, I would like to clarify that I took no position on any particular plural as 'correct'; I just posted a Boston.com discussion of the matter. However, things seemed a lot easier when the Toyotas were all named Corolla, Corona, Cressida, Supra, Celica, Tundra, EtCetera.
prii
What blather! You nincompoops! Everyone knows that Prius is Ojibway for "deer that I approached from the left while it was moving in a northerly direction parallel to the riverbank", in the ergative case (2nd declension), and the plural is "prí-prí-çatxl". Now just shut up and listen quietly to your betters from now on.
Plural of walrus is walruses. Although "walrus" can also be used for the plural.
Once we got a plurality for "Priora", we need to select a word for a collection of Priora moving together in the same direction. A gaggle of Priora moved briskly in HOV lane? A bevy of Priora parked in front of Stone Soup natural food store? A pride of Priora followed the newly-married couple who drove an Insight? I vote for alliterative pride of Priora.
A smug of Prius. (I like the collective noun myself.)
Kelly - I like that: "a smug of Prius." Well played.
That's all fine and good, but will it play in Prioria?
Priuses. All new words entering the language should be treated as regular- nouns should be given plurals with 's'; verbs past tenses with 'ed' etc.
And when Rom burns, MY fiddles with plural forms. Seriously, MY, you still not anything to say about Bali? I thought the place of the conference was chosen thinking of you because of the easy spelling?
Isn't a "smug" already the term for a group of San Franciscans?
"Prius" is not Latin, but from Quenya; the plural is therefore "Priya"
Sorry, but the CT post you referenced is totally ignorant of basic transport economics. There isn't a single factual/economic assumption that could withstand scrutiny and the basic argumentation is nonsense. It claims to only consider known, feasible step function gains (achieving 1990 pax per auto rates) and then assumes we reorganize all airline traffic into 800 seat A380s. There are only about 50 city pairs in America with 800 pax per day. Quiggin assumes we shut down the rest of the network (sorry, Salt Lake City--you get no airline service whatsoever) and have a state monopoly run the 1-2 flights a day on the remaining routes (clearly no scope for workable competition and you destroy all network economics). This is like assuming that every New York area commuter can get the fuel/carbon efficiency of the IRT at rush hour. All of the other assumptions (A380 fuel efficiency gains, ATC impacts) are narrow, local comparisons absurdly extrapolated to national/global levels. Transportation obviously has to be a serious part of any serious fuel/carbon discussion; unfortunatly 99.5% of the discussion so far reflects either mindless PR from incumbent interests or this type of total indifference to the economics and societal impacts.
In solidarity with Honda, Ford, GM, makers of mp3 players, copiers, and adhesive bandages, how about we use the word: hybrids.
Energy saving idea: Aircrafts use a lot of fuel, and are popular because of their speed and sometimes even because of their cost. Raising taxes of airline fuel may be politically iffy, but there are other means to make air travel less attractive. First, we can try to humiliate the travelers. Suppose that ... hm., require them to strip in public may be hard to pass, but how about parading them barefoot, magnanimously allowing socks (and if you counted on that hole on a toe to be invisible, haha, we got you sucker. Then we can grope them. Then we can try to confiscate various small items according to some obscure rules changing daily. Clearly, we made big strides in this direction. The question is what remains to do? Perhaps a Charter of Rights of Ground Travellers to assure that using buses and trains is much more dignified?
The Cartalk guys had a long discussion recently about cars with 'plural' names - Acura, Integra, Altima, etcetera.
Comments closed December 29, 2007. |
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Heads in the Sand
I think Prii (pree-eye) would make more sense than Priusi.
Posted by Brian | December 15, 2007 3:38 PM