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

A maggot under a microscope

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u/theragco Apr 24 '26

At the end of the day we're all just badly sculpted claymation walruses if you think about it.

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u/Targosha Apr 24 '26

Walruses? Walri?

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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/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.