arran...god
New member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2010
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- Student or Learner
i always thought it was status' guess not...
I would be sorry to see Greek and Latin reduced to the stati of mere appendages to Linguistics and English plural-formation...
My twopennyworth: I'd like to suggest that the word status is reserved for where we mean a quality that can be attributed to either one or many. As in: "members of the royal family have status" and the "Prince of Wales has status". You would talk about different degrees of status. I'd like to think that the word status does not have a plural. The temptation to pluralize would indicate that another word is probably better. e.g. water can exist in one state or another - 3 states: ice, water or steam. i.e state, not status ... and, in the example above, not a plurality of status but a plurality of degrees of status. I imagine that literate Romans would have reserved the 4th declension for nouns of this sort - abstract, qualitative and not amenable to being pluralized.
Statuses if you want to be in the majority (and sound retarded in conversation)
Hypercorrect musings aside, statuses is listed as the (standard) plural of 'status' by both the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's - arguably the two foremost English-language authorities in the world (and generally considered to be not in the least 'retarded'!).
:roll:
Bottom Line:
"status" (long u) is the most technically correct form, even if Ox and Web want to make everyone feel all warm and snuggly about having crapped out a deuce like "statuses" :lol:
It was good.come up with "statuses", and it was bad.
Bottom Line:
"status" (long u) is the most technically correct form, even if Ox and Web want to make everyone feel all warm and snuggly about having crapped out a deuce like "statuses" :lol:
I may have to visit more often [if that's cool])
Yes, provided you remember that I'm the rudest person here - don't try to outdo me!!
;-)
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