The Underscore Archives

On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 10:05:56AM +0000, Oliver Humpage wrote:
> on 14/3/07 08:11, Tim Beadle at tim.beadle at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> >> So, viruses is about 70 times more popular, but virii does appear to
> >> be in "quite common" usage as well and certainly has a known meaning.
> 
> Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

Yeah, prescriptive dictionaries are so stupid, I still don't quite
understand the point except for scrabble, and even then it's only
the two letter words and those with q and v in. (Latin again!)

In the world of software how can virii be "wrong"? There's less hits
for xmorph on most search engines, so it's in more common use than
that, and yet that is a word to me and others, okay so it's a program
name, but it's used as a word, a noun to name a tool, which to me is
logically an object.

I'm not sure who the stupid people are, those that proscribe
certain language use or those that prescribe what words may be
used, or those that use the words that are used by otheres.

Anyway, I'm probably an amateur [*] linguist, just like I expect Tom
Christiansen is. I guess we must speak different languages then!

        Steve

* But I'm not an amateur drummer.