VAGITUS

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VAGITUS

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:16 am

• vagitus •

Pronunciation: vê-jay-tês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. The first cry of a new-born baby. 2. The cry or wailing of any small child.

Notes: Apparently, today's intriguing word is so rarely used, no dictionary compiler knows what its plural would be: vagiti or vagituses. You are always safe with the latter. This word is used primarily in medicine but there is no reason why the rest of us cannot use it, too.

In Play: One of the most important events of human life is the sound of the first cry of a newborn infant: "It was a difficult birth but all the pain was erased by the sound of my new son's vagitus." However, the meaning of this word has important metaphorical implications, too: "The new president's inaugural speech was the vagitus of an era of radical innovation at the college."

Word History: Today's Good Word is Latin vagitus "the crying, squalling of young children", the noun from the verb vagire "to cry, squall". The same original root, *uagh-, underlies Sanskrit vagnu "a cry, sound" and Greek ekho "a sound, echo". (I think everyone will echo my thanks to M. Henri Day for suggesting such an interesting word as we have read about today.)
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Brazilian dude
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Postby Brazilian dude » Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:55 am

Apparently, today's intriguing word is so rarely used, no dictionary compiler knows what its plural would be: vagiti or vagituses
But a vagitus is a 4th declension noun, like apparatus, whose plural is the same as its singular: vagitus.

Brazilian dude
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M. Henri Day
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Postby M. Henri Day » Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:32 pm

...

But a vagitus is a 4th declension noun, like apparatus, whose plural is the same as its singular: vagitus.
As is, if I am not misinformed, that charming little word «virus». Others have claimed that as a noun («stuff» to the cognoscenti), it belonged to the 3rd declension, to be declined like «opus», «opera». Thus some of my colleagues here in Sweden insist on «vira» in the plural. The problem is, however, that plural forms of «virus» are said to be undocumented in surviving Latin texts....

Henri
曾记否,到中流击水,浪遏飞舟?

tcward
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Postby tcward » Tue Jan 03, 2006 6:10 pm

Henri, this confuses me:
Others have claimed that as a noun («stuff» to the cognoscenti), it belonged to the 3rd declension, to be declined like «opus», «opera». Thus some of my colleagues here in Sweden insist on «vira» in the plural.
Wouldn't the correctly formed plural be, in such a case, virera, which is rather unwieldy?

-Tim
...don't know squat about Latin.

Brazilian dude
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Postby Brazilian dude » Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:31 pm

As is, if I am not misinformed, that charming little word «virus». Others have claimed that as a noun («stuff» to the cognoscenti), it belonged to the 3rd declension, to be declined like «opus», «opera». Thus some of my colleagues here in Sweden insist on «vira» in the plural. The problem is, however, that plural forms of «virus» are said to be undocumented in surviving Latin texts....
No, virus, i (virus, poison, venom) is a 2nd declension noun. What is interesting about it is that it is a neuter noun despite the (predominantly masculine) -us. Its plural is (or would be) correctly viri, just like any other second declension noun that ends in -us, but it's a mass noun, which complicates things further. I would say no to vira, but similar cases of -us nouns that ended up having -a plural are not unheard of: cf. carbasus (pl. carbasa), locus (pl. loca/loci), jocus (pl. joca/joci), frenum (pl. frena/freni).

This is interesting.

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M. Henri Day
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Postby M. Henri Day » Sat Jan 14, 2006 8:21 pm

The impression I get from reading the material to which you kindly provide a link, BD, is that there exists some evidence for Latin «virus» as both a 2nd and a 4th declension noun, but that - as I had understood previously - there is no evidence for plural forms. Interesting also to note a tendency for it to remain invariant in other cases than the nominative. I remember corresponding on this matter with a Latin scholar retained by Svenska läkarförbundet many years ago ; he was opposed to forms like «vira» and thought that the plural in Swedish should be «virus»....

Henri
曾记否,到中流击水,浪遏飞舟?


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