Well, today my twitterfeed and Facebook feed has been inundated with this video on the plural of octopus (tip o’ the pileus to Terrence Lockyer, Francesca Tronchin, and a few others):

… fwiw, being a Classicist, rogue or otherwise, using octopodes is one of the few times you get to use your Greek plural endings in public, so that’s what I do.  And just so you don’t have to just blindly believe an editor at Merriam-Webster, here’s amicus noster Terrence Lockyer’s comments on matters similar brought up on the Classics list a year and a half ago, inter alia:

People will tell you that this should be “octopi”,
because it is from Latin, and Latin words ending “-us”
are pluralized in “-i”. This, however, ignores two
facts: (1) in Latin, common words ending “-us” may
belong to one of three different classes (called
declensions), and while it is true that the most common
class (the second declension masculine) pluralizes in
“-i”, the others simply do not – the second class
(third declension neuter) pluralizes in “-ra” (e. g.,
“opus > opera” [work], “corpus > corpora” [body], to
mention two words adopted by English), while the third
class has plurals spelled with “-us” like the
singulars, though pronounced slightly differently; and
(2) “octopus” is not originally a Latin word at all,
and does not belong to any Latin class.

In fact, “octopus” comes from ancient Greek (where it
could mean an eight-legged thing, specifically an
octopus, or a scorpion), and contains the elements
“octo” (eight) and “pous” (foot, leg: this is also
found in the famous name “Oedipus”, from Greek
“Oidipous”, but it is less common to pluralize personal
names; and the Latin equivalent is the word “pes”,
plural “pedes”, from which English gets words like
“pedal” and “pedestrian”). The hyperpedantic who wish
to pluralize “octopus” strictly according to derivation
should therefore use the correct Greek plural, which
would be “octopodes” (pronounced “ok-top-odd-es”), or
in English perhaps “octopods”. For the rest of us,
“octopuses” will do just fine.

That said, it has just come to my attention that this ‘ask the editor’ thing is an ongoing series from the fine folks at Merriam-Webster and there are a couple of others worth taking a look at. This one, ferinstance, looks at the Classical Roots of some English words:

Here’s one  that’s another one of my personal bugbears (and I don’t have any qualms about correcting folks):

Enjoy!

From Eurasianet:

Archeologists in Kazakhstan have discovered the grave of a gold-clad ancient Scythian warrior who has already earned himself a nickname: “The Sun Lord.” Researchers uncovered the find in a Scythian grave consisting of seven burial mounds in Karaganda Region east of the capital, Astana.

The opulence of the warrior’s burial indicates that he was a leader as well as a fighter, expedition leader Arman Beysenov explained. “He was probably a ruler and a warrior simultaneously,” Beysenov said in remarks quoted by the Kazinform news agency on July 16. “The person’s torso was entirely covered with gold. The figure of a leader like this was associated with the sun. He was a sort of ‘sun lord.’”

The warrior was likely buried in the 4th or 5th century BC in a grave that was actually discovered half a century ago, though excavation work only started last year.

Robbers had looted the grave in ancient times, Beysenov said, but it still contained quite a horde of ancient treasure. One of the burial mounds alone yielded 130 gold objects that included the figure of a feline predator, pendants and parts of sword belts. Archeologists also found hundreds of gold beads and 14 bronze arrowheads in the grave.

Inevitably, the archeological discovery is being trumpeted as comparable to that of the Golden Man, found in the Issyk burial mound just outside Kazakhstan’s commercial capital, Almaty, in 1969. The Golden Man, who’s believed to have been a young Scythian prince who lived in the 4th or 5th century BC, was interred wearing some 4,000 gold ornaments.

He has become a national symbol — the image of the Golden Man, with his trademark conical gold headdress, decorates the monument to independence on Almaty’s Republic Square, and in 2006 President Nursultan Nazarbayev unveiled a statue of him outside the Kazakh Embassy in Washington. The original is on display at Almaty’s Museum of Gold.

Archeologists are now hoping that their digs in eastern Kazakhstan will reveal more information about the glorious “Sun Lord,” the latest find from the Scythian past.

• via: Kazakh Archeologists Discover Ancient Scythian “Sun Lord”

… no photos, alas, but here’s a photo of the monument in Almaty’s Republic Square if you need some imagination prodding …