What’s the plural of cyclops? If you have a group of those one-eyed mythical monsters, your best bet is cyclopes, pronounced sye-KLOH-peez. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Plural of Cyclops”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Liam Scoil from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Liam. Welcome to the show.
Hi, Liam.
Hi.
How can we help?
Well, so I really like collective nouns. I really like the idea of them. And I was wondering what the collective noun for a group of cyclopses is.
Any particular reason? Are you being chased by some?
Well, I was playing a game with a friend, and we had an army of Cyclopses, and we just realized that neither of us had any idea what that could be.
I know it’s got a bunch of Latin origins, but I don’t think the collective nouns seem to ever have a Latin base to them.
Maybe a monocle of Cyclopses.
The best one we came up with so far was a corneacopia.
Oh!
Corneacopia.
A corneacopia of Cyclopses.
Oh my gosh, that is painful.
But I like it.
I keep saying Cyclopses, but there are two possible plurals, right? You can even say Cyclops as a plural and singular, or you can say Cyclopses as the plural.
I think the more common one actually is Cyclopes.
Ooh, nice.
Yeah, and that reflects the Greek origins of the word. It comes from Greek words that mean round eye and Cyclops in Odyssey.
But there was a whole race of Cyclops. They were titans in ancient Greek history.
And you know the story of Cyclops with the big eye going after Odysseus and all of his guys?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And so the plural, the more common plural actually is Cyclopes, which is C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-S. And that reflects the Greek roots.
Cyclopes.
Unless you’re talking about the freshwater crustacean, you’re not talking about the freshwater crustacean, are you?
No.
No, unfortunately not.
Those tend not to show up in video games. They’re little bitty ones. They look like they have one eye, and those are just cyclops if they’re plural, like fish or deer.
I mean, I was going to say an Argus of cyclops.
Oh, that’s good.
You know, Argus was the guy in Greek myth who had 100 eyes all over his body.
Liam, you win at the radio today.
Yeah, I think corneacopia has got to be it.
Oh, that’s good.
Unlike monocle.
Thanks for calling, buddy.
Yeah, monocle as well.
All right, thank you very much.
All right, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Wait, did I say cyclopes? I meant to say cyclopes. That’s the most common plural of cyclops, cyclopes. Although I hope you never have to use it.
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