On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:30:23 -0400, Tony Harminc wrote: >On 18 September 2012 16:52, John Gilmore wrote: >> I don't find the argument that the terminal 's' in 'PoOps' represents >> the plural terminus of 'Principles' at all persuasive. It seems to me >> to be a desperate expedient to justify the indefensible. > >I find it entirely persuasive. I believe it's a quite ordinary >metathesis, like many others in English and indeed many languages. >While English has little experience with forming - let alone >pluralising - words as acronyms or as severe condensations, it has >long experience with words like teaspoonful, which has an unargued >plural of teaspoonfuls, rather than teaspoonsful (or teaspoonsfull). >Of course we have phrases like Governors General, but once we've >collapsed our original into a single pronounceable word, my ear says >the 's' both must be preserved, and must go at the end. > It's Friday. We can revisit the discussion of the "singular of MIPS". Or we can go get a beer.
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