{"id":5938,"date":"2022-04-08T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=5938"},"modified":"2022-03-31T13:08:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T18:08:28","slug":"plural-of-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/singular-vs-plural\/plural-of-octopus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Plural of <em>Octopus<\/em>: Are We Using Proper English?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An <em>octopus<\/em> is a marine cephalopod mollusk that has a soft body and eight arms. What word should we use if we are referring to more than one of these invertebrate animals?<\/p>\n<h2>Two Ways to Spell the Plural of <em>Octopus<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>Unlike many words in the English language, the word <em>octopus<\/em> has more than one spelling for the plural: <em>octopi <\/em>and <em>octopuses<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>Examples<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nWhile we were deep-sea diving, we saw several <u>octopi<\/u>.<br \/>\nWhile we were deep-sea diving, we saw several <u>octopuses<\/u>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Dating from the early 19th century, <em>octopi<\/em> is the older of the two options. <em>Octopuses<\/em> dates from later in the 1800s.<\/p>\n<p>Merriam-Webster also mentions a third plural, <em>octopodes<\/em>. This uncommon plural has a Greek ending and is not a preferred option for daily formal writing.<\/p>\n<h2><em>Octopi <\/em>or <em>Octopuses<\/em>: Which One Should You Use?<\/h2>\n<p>Both <em>octopi<\/em> and <em>octopuses <\/em>are correct, acceptable words to use in American English.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An octopus is a marine cephalopod mollusk that has a soft body and eight arms. What word should we use if we are referring to more than one of these invertebrate animals? Two Ways to Spell the Plural of Octopus Unlike many words in the English language, the word octopus has more than one spelling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singular-vs-plural"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5939,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5938\/revisions\/5939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}