feti

See also: Feti

English edit

Noun edit

feti

plural of fetus

Usage notes edit

Sometimes proscribed, considered hypercorrect (the plural of Latin fētus, which belongs to the fourth declension, is fētūs; the -us → -i rule is a pattern of the second declension).^[1]^[2]^[3]

References edit

^ Bernard Towers (1967) “Fetus vs. Foetus”, in Archives of Disease in Childhood, page 224, column 2:
As to plurals, the correct form is fetūs with the long second syllable (never, of course, feti, from the sight and sound of which both mind and heart recoil). But perhaps it would be altogether too pedantic to insist on such ‘difficult’ plurals these days, and I for one would settle for fetuses.
^ Wesley W. Parke (1975) Photographic Atlas of Fetal Anatomy, University Park Press, page xvii:
Because it was a noun of the fourth declension, its plural spelling was identical to that of its nominative singular, but a diacritical mark was placed over the final vowel to indicate a change in its pronunciation to a long u (i.e., fetūs; however, to eliminate the need of the diacritic, the anglicized fetuses is acceptable).
^ Arthur D. Hlavaty (2002 July 11) “Letters of Comment”, in The Southern Fandom Confederation Bulletin, volume 8, number 1, published October 2002, page 21:
I wish to apologize for an error in my LoC that made it seem as if you were ignorant. When I wrote the letter, I was under the impression that feti was the plural of fetus. I have since learned that the correct Latin plural would be fetūs (note accent). This is confusing enough that we should probably settle for the boring English fetuses.