More than one octopus
So I saw the movie Penguins Of Madagascar this morning. How was it? Funny :)
There was this one part, however... I can't remember the exact sentence, but Skipper (the lead penguin) told one of the other penguins to "Take care of the octopi."
Wait - what?
Octopi??? Oh dear...
A lot of people think that is the correct plural of octopus, but let's take a look.
When the word octopus showed up in the English language it was given the standard English plural of octopuses. But around the same time a lot of English words ending in 'us' were given a Latin ending for the plural. The idea was to make English regular and predictable, like Latin was. So the plural became octopi.
Of course, the word octopus isn't derived from Latin. No, instead it is derived from Greek. So using a Greek plural, the word is octopodes.
The little catch is that when foreign words are incorporated into English, they become English words. And as such, they get the standard English pluralisation (is that a word?). So, the plural for octopus? Octopuses :)