1 Prius, 2 Prii???

The plural of Prius would certainly not be Prius'. That's possessive.

I read somewhere that Prius is both singular and plural....kind of like buffalo or elk....as in "I saw three elk and two buffalo at the zoo yesterday," you would say "I saw four Prius on my way into work this morning."

 

No, we're never going to reach agreement. Advocates of "prii" draw the analogy from Latin, but personally I favor English when I am speaking English. While the word Prius may come from Latin, we use it as an English word, and I prefer the English usage. Thus I would consider either Prius or Priuses to be correct plural forms.

However, others will disagree, and we will never reach agreement.

 

I would think the latin would be more correct since the word Prius was taken from latin.

 

I tend to say "Prii" (pronounced "PrEE-eye"), but for fun I sometimes say "Priuseseseseses." Another way to pronounce "Priuses" would be "PrEE-us-EEz" (rather than "PrEE-us-ez").

 

I say both Prii and Priuses...depending on my mood and who I'm talking to. I don't care if either one of them or both of them are wrong though-I don't put that much thought into it.

 

you mean I'm the only one who lost sleep over this??? :lol:

I use the term Prius for 1 or more.....Prii when I'm being funny.

 

Prii would be correct in the nomitive. (As in filius (son) or filii (sons), but that is masculine, and I suspect Prius is neutral).
Then there is the vocative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative, if we want to think about the other declensions.

I'm pretty sure it would be "Pri, will you start today?" for the locative.

We need the genitive (of the Prius), the accusative "I drove my Prius" and the dative "for the Prius". Now, if we have a Latin scholar anywhere here, maybe we can solve this.

- rick

 

Yes and no... If your Prius possesses something, it would be Prius's. Writing Prius' implies more than one Priu possesses something, which is pretty ridiculous seeing as Priu means nothing to us.

Many people were taught that making a possessive of a word ending in s doesn't take another s. This is patently incorrect, as shown by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Po...rds_ending_in_s or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_genitive

Anyway... I've said either Prii or Priuses. Someone suggested Priora in a thread a few months ago.

 

You could always use "One Prius....And Another Prius"

For example, if there's three of them together you can say, "See the Prius, next to another Prius. And there's another one next to it." :lol:

What I find harder is...What would a group be? A Battery of Prii? A Hybrid of Prii? I go with Pride of Prii, myself. Cars come in a fleet, but a Fleet of Prii sounds so common.

 

That's a very strange comment!! You mean that when I use words like focus, radius, catus, virus etc whose pural form is foci, radii, cati, viri respectively, I am not using English? Come on - it's part of the English language that words ending in 'us' take the pural form of 'i" just as it is part of the English language that words ending in "um" takes the pural form of "a" as in stadium - stadia, forum - fora, criterium - criteria.

I think in proper English, the pural for of Prius is Prii but like the word "virus" , where ignorant users mangled it enough, it's been acceptable lately to use "viruses" and so I give in to Priuses. If we were speaking Latin, I think the proper pural form for Prius should be "Priora" - it's norminative femine pural.

 

Aargh. I thought I was likely right on the nominative plural for neutral nouns. It may, however, be the case that it is a more rare form of the "u declension", in which case, perhaps, Prius is the plural.

What say we all chip in and by some Jesuit university two of these, and see what the thank you note says?

-- rick

 

We've had this discussion before. The plural of the Latin word "prius" is not "prii", it's "priora".

 

As another poster suggested, doesn't the Latin plural depend on the declension in the context in which it is used? I.e., to a Prius, of a Prius, by a Prius, etc., etc., etc., not to mention which gender you choose to apply to it. Since English does not have declensions, we are modifying all the Latin nouns we use, even when we imagine we are using the Latin plural.

To yauman: English is inconsistent. Some English words from Latin use the "i" plural, some don't, and others have multiple correct forms. But Prius isn't even a noun in Latin, it's a verb that Toyota has decided to use as a noun.

Maybe we should use the Japanese plural. Whatever that is.

 

After checking out 3 English style books, I'm gonna use "Priuses", because 1) it's a proper noun, and 2) it ends in an "s".

Latin is a dead language. Move on.

Similarly, it should be "the Prius's wiper blades" when using the possessive because of the "-s" ending plus being a proper noun.

 

But if fourth declension, "Prius' would be the plural as well as the singular; only if second declension would it be "Prii." Prii seems unnatural to me and unless you are one of the "in group," it would not likely be recognized or used comfortably.

I have no problem with "Priuses," frankly, which is clearly correct English. No. Priuses is fine with me; but what do we call a GROUP of priuses? A gaggle, a herd? A "confluence," perhaps? A "transport?" :mellow:

Someone suggested "pride," and I like that. "There goes a pride of Priuses."

Spindoc