Computer Mice or Mouses?
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 21 19:58:35 UTC 2012
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> commoner
I take it, then, that, as far as the OED is concerned, _commoner_ is
more common than _more common_.
Youneverknow.;-)
FWIW, since 1993, when I got my first Macintosh, the only plural that
I've ever seen in any Apple- / Mac-related publication whatsoever,
print or electronic, is _mice_. However, IMO, the "correct" form
remains _mouses_, but only because, in the '70's, a member of my
doctoral committee, lecturing on historical morphology, stated that
derived forms tend to be regularized, providing a plethora of what I
found to be, under the circumstances, fully-persuasive examples.
As a consequence, I still *feel*, even after all these years, that the
plural "should be" _mouses_ and that _mice_ is an "aberration," in
this case.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list