Computer Mice or Mouses?

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 21 20:03:52 UTC 2012


I had a similar reaction when I saw it, but thought I'd let it go.

     VS-)

On 3/21/2012 3:58 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> 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

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