The Doctor offers an observation

Date: 2015-12-01 10:16 pm (UTC)
thnidu: Tom Baker's Dr. Who, as an anthropomorphic hamster, in front of the Tardis. ©C.T.D'Alessio http://tinyurl.com/9q2gkko (Dr. Whomster)
From: [personal profile] thnidu
I'm seeing a couple of quasi-Latin phrases being floated around this thread, and I'm pretty sure they're all attempts at the same expression, none of them quite on target. Genius loci is Latin for "spirit of a/the place". The first word is the same one we took into English to describe people like Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein: "genius" (not "genus", which means "tribe, type, kind"). The second is the genitive (possessive) form of "locus", meaning "place", and has only one "i": "loci". It looks and sounds the same as the plural form. But if you want to pluralize the phrase it's "genii loci", "spirits of place", for the same reason why the English plural is not "spirit of places".

Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
(will be screened if not validated)
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org

Profile

commodorified: a capital m, in fancy type, on a coloured background (Default)
commodorified

December 2024

S M T W T F S
1234567
8910 11121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 22nd, 2025 01:22 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios