What Is the Plural of Prius?
This is a question that has perplexed us for some time now. We always assumed it was Prii or maybe Priuses but without being sure, we’ve always avoided using the plural form.
It seems this question has stumped others as well. Some of the more popular suggestions offered in response to a blog post by Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic are Prii, Priora and Priuses. Now Jan Freeman, a Boston Globe columnist who also writes for the International Herald Tribune, says she has the answer: Priora.
Huh? Isn’t that a town in Illinois?
We kid. Freeman, who had suggested Prioria in a blog post at Brainiac, put the question to Harry Mount. He wrote "Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life," which Freeman describes as "a paean to the joys of Latin," and presumably knows a thing or two about a language we haven’t thought about since high school.
Mount says Prius is the neuter nominative/accusative singular form of the adjective prior, so the neuter plural is Priora. But Mount says he thinks of cars as feminine, so in that case the plural is Priores.
We’re glad that’s settled. But we’re still going to avoid using the plural form.
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