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by DrJokepu
6217 days ago
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Being a Latin geek myself I can't help but point out that nouns in the fourth declension (u stem) also end in -us in singular and receive an -us affix in plural as well. "Virus" is however, in the second declension (virus -i n. "slime, poison, goo") with the oddity of being neutral while having a second declension -us ending which is normally a feature of masculine nouns. And indeed, its plural would be "viri". |
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It's also important to note that scholars don't actually know the proper plural of virus because they haven't really found one in extant literature.
Wikipedia has a longer discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus#Virus