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
The term is a direct draw from Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series. I'm afraid you'll have to take that up with Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale [g].
The Doctor offers an observation
Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody
Re: The Doctor offers an observation