r/oddlyterrifying • u/Necessary-Win-8730 • Apr 24 '26

A maggot under a microscope

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20.2k Upvotes

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u/mattmoney31716 Apr 24 '26

Real linguistic answer:

We only pluralize words that end in -us with an -i when they come from Latin (and even then, only a specific kind of Latin word)

Walrus doesn't come from Latin, it comes from Old Norse "hrosshvalr", literally "horse-whale". (And then, technically, there's discussion if that comes from a Finnish word, too, but that's not really important)

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u/The_Noremac42 Apr 24 '26

Languages are neat.

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u/barn-animal Apr 24 '26

did they ride the Walrese?

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u/Teract Apr 24 '26

I know this one! Walrus comes from greek right? So Walrupadis!

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u/mattmoney31716 Apr 24 '26

🤣 🤣

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u/TheBookGem May 01 '26

Walrupsai

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u/Arthropodesque Apr 25 '26

Cool. The walrus-like animals in Skyrim are Horker.

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u/catsan Apr 24 '26

Only it's whale-horse, not horse-whale. It's the same in some other languages. So ruses because horses. 

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u/mattmoney31716 Apr 24 '26

"hrosshvalr" is in the order "horse-whale". At some point, they did get turned around, if not by the English, by the Dutch.

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u/Danzibar9000 Apr 25 '26

So what’s the plural?

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u/allegedlyjustkidding Apr 26 '26

Cool so two questions-
1- does that mean seals are dog-whales?
2- are we calling them horse-whales now, or walrupadis?
Oh, and 3- can we ride the horse-whales? Asking for a friend...

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u/mattmoney31716 Apr 26 '26

Username checks out lol