Plural of the word "status"

[beascarpetta]

I think we should get into that. I was not fond of high school Latin until I got into college. Then, the value was revealed to me - law, medicine, English, vocabulary, etc. I would support compulsory Latin for anyone interested in academics.

I really salute that.:-D

 

[MrPedantic]

would you rather have examples taken from prose authors or poets (where there might be ambiguous undertones concerning the meaning of the word "status" such as in Plautus,slightly ironic even) and which era would you be most interested in?

:up:

That was remarkably speedy, Bea. It took me five minutes to find my meagre one, and you've brought up a netful.

I'll take whatever you've got.

All the best,

MrP

 

[beascarpetta]

would the quotes such as I posted on page 2 be alright or would you need more information

as to which book,verse,etc they are taken from?

glad to be of help.so nice to find people who still know Latin.

 

[rudeboyal]

Please excuse me for saying the following but I believe it is important that this is known.

I am a man with American nationality but was raised in England and although I love America in many ways there is, among the few things I dislike, the fact that some Americans seem to forget where their language comes from. This is quite displeasing because language is one of the key aspects of culture and for those who don't know where the language spoken in America (other than Spanish) comes from... it comes from England.

The word STATUS, in plural, is STATUS, although derived from Latin, where words as such, in the plural form, end in "i".

Please repeat the word STATUSES in your mind or in a full sentence out loud and tell me that it is not one bloody mouthful of a word to pronounce and that, even if one could be bothered to pronounces such a word, it just does not sound right! English is a beautiful language derived, throughout history, from many languages such as Latin, French and Germanic languages as well as Celtic and Viking languages. I am, however,very much for the change and evolution of spoken communication but I believe that there would be better ways of creating a plural form of words, as such, without always adding "es" at the end, especially if it makes the word ugly and difficult to pronounce. Now... knowing that America is, at the moment, a leading world power, we all know the people who inhabit this land can do what they would like with their language, but this website is called "UsingEnglish.com" and I think that we should stick to talking about the true English language. That being said, I do still enjoy American slang as well as their odd expressions and the new words the invent to precisely define the sub-category of an existing noun, such as "cookie".

 

[rlpmjp]

All good points, especially about the pronunciation, but whether to allow "clever" into the dictionary just after Shakespear's time or to allow statuses is by popular, majority rule, so Americans have so voted:
status - Wiktionary

 

[jacqueny16]

I have another question relating to this subject---assuming you use the word status-which is correct??- The status of the expenses is or are as follows. Some grammar checks say it's appropriate to use is and some say are.

 

[abaka]

"Status" may be the Latin fourth-declension plural of "status", but the English plural is "statuses". If it exists at all, that is: status is something of an abstract noun. Perhaps that's why "statuses" seems odd.

To answer your question: paraphrase!

The expenses [each] show the following status: ...

 

[JSMC]

I came to this forum after typing 'statuses' into google - this word is used in a textbook I'm reading, 'Jurisprudence & Legal Theory: Commentary and Materials' (p194) - Authors: Penner et al.
I had not understood the word - not realising that it was a plural of status.

 

[MarkHA]

My twopennyworth: I'd like to suggest that the word status is reserved for where we mean a quality that can be attributed to either one or many. As in: "members of the royal family have status" and the "Prince of Wales has status". You would talk about different degrees of status. I'd like to think that the word status does not have a plural. The temptation to pluralize would indicate that another word is probably better. e.g. water can exist in one state or another - 3 states: ice, water or steam. i.e state, not status ... and, in the example above, not a plurality of status but a plurality of degrees of status. I imagine that literate Romans would have reserved the 4th declension for nouns of this sort - abstract, qualitative and not amenable to being pluralized.

 

[Twiliath]

No, no, no.
"status of the expenses" - the word "expenses" is the predicate nominative of "status." It is not the subject of the sentence.
The word "status" is the subject of the sentence. Therefore, the verb to use is "is." As in, the "status ... is".

 

[Tdol]

Hope that helps.

I'm afraid it doesn't help because your rules are all wrong. You make plurals by adding -s to most words and not just those ending with -e or -h. And the stuff about the apostrophe is wrong. I also agree with Twiliath that the verb should agree with ''status' not 'expenses' in your other answer.

 

[donperry1]

In software database design, we follow a convention where each entity is pluralized

eg, a table about customer would be "customers"

..now, i have a table about marital status. That is what brought me to this site. VERY INTERESTING, i learned alot.

I named my table Marital_states...now i'll call it Marital_status

thank you all

 

[philo2009]

The Fourth Declension; the Latin plural is status (with a long U). I wish people wouldn't fool around with Latin endings when they don't know what they're doing.

The only admissible English plural for "status" is "statuses". If people aren't happy with that, they need to paraphrase.

b

Complete agreement! 'Status' - however you may pronounce the 'u' - is clearly useless as a plural, and 'stati' has no basis in Latin.

 

[oceania68]

(newbie here) Australians have a tendency to cut short words that are a "waste of time to speak" commonly known as slang. But the result is still the same.. example of a language transformation? Perhaps!.. Latin is a wonderful language.. i would like to learn one day.. Now as for the word Status v's Statuses v's Statii etc. Most people I know use the word Status or Statuses, because ultimately, everyone understands what is being said. I personally prefer the word Status as "plural" in itself and would also depend upon the context of the sentence.. Many people use Statuses, which is fine, but when you're taught that "Platypus" is the plural form and not "Platypuses" which many of us use, the proper term for 1 Platypus is Platypii which looks ridiculous to me. So some words are accepted through popularity rather than correct forms of language. Laziness? perhaps! But again, it's understanding the meaning of what one is saying. I guess also thats more of an Australian thing perhaps, we are known for it. :-D Cheers everyone...

 

[Anarch]

Platypodes or Platypuses is the correct plural of Platypus (which is the singular). Platypus is derived, through Medieval Latin, from Ancient Greek and should not have Latin rules applied to it.
Back on topic, I'd have to agree that status should be pluralised to status (with the odd u) if we follow the Latin rules. If however we consider the examples of Octopus and Platypus (taken from Greek), whose plurals are so obscure as to create confusion, then it may be simpler to accept statuses (bearing in mind that language does evolve and English and Latin are distinct languages).



I currently only teach English part-time, and it's been a while since I studied such things, so would not claim my response as definitive but I could not sit idle and read about Platypi and Octopi.

 

[esperantist]

Well friends, but what is the summary of the topic? I read through a lot of posts, but have no confidence about discussed variants up to now... Maybe there is competent authority who can drop the curtain?

 

[philo2009]

Summary: the plural of 'status' is 'statuses'.

!

 

[onedmc]

No self-respecting Roman citizen or author, be it in the

........
dead using any other plural than "STATUS".

I envy those self-respecting Romans they never had to write a document to unambiguously explain the different states that a status manager can be in.

 

[macanudo]

I did some quick research about status and it appears that people do indeed use statuses for the plural. However it seems to only be for medical or legal use. I also found it for a few off hand things like talking about the statuses of help tickets on online websites or the statuses of RPG characters.
I think if you are talking about the state or condition of a person, it is okay to use statuses, but you shouldn't use it if you are talking about the state or condition of affairs or the social/professional standing of someone. What do you think?
As a sidenote, in chatting with some English teachers on Twitter, it appears 'stati' is considered wrong by most (if not all) English teachers. So my recommendation would be to avoid it.

Anyway, I posted some examples and explainations in a recent blog post: What is the plural of status?
If you disagree with anything, by all means comment.

 

[SoothingDave]

Not a teacher.

In all of my life I have never heard anyone use "stati." And I have used phrases like "referenda on stadia" (where the media would say referendums on stadiums).

But "stati" seems a bridge too far.