Elvises -> Elvi(i)

[Charles Doyle]

Or, more correctly, it could be a genitive singular, with its reference implied: "It good to be back on the old <site, environs, etc.> OF the campus ("campi"). . . ."



---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 10:53:52 -0400
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>
>
>At 10:35 AM -0400 8/7/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>When I was in college in the 1960s, it was fashionable to use the (apparent) plural "campi" [-paI] in singular reference to the campus ("It's good to be back on the old campi after that horrible trip"). The form was most often understood jocularly, I believe--at least among those who had some Latin.
>>
>>--Charlie

>
>Are you sure that was intended as a plural and not as the ablative singular?  Of course, that *should* have been campo:, not campi, but maybe the ablative has fallen together with the genitive after all these years...  (Sort of like Dative Sickness in Icelandic.)
>
>LH

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