Plural of Necropolis

[Dankone]

//Posted this on general forums, figured I'd put it here too.

.. is NOT Necropoli.

No, not even Tigole is right. Necropolis comes from Greek:

Νεκρος (Nekros)- corpse
Πολις (Polis)- city

Naturally, it would be Necropoli if it was a Latin word ending in -us (If you're Latin savvy, the second declension). However, Polis is an irregular word, meaning its nominative form (The form used as the subject or complement of a sentence, EG: "The city is big" (Subject) or "That is the city" (Complement)) is weirdly formed. In all the other forms-- Genitive (shows possession, translated as "of X", can also be used with various prepositions), Dative (used for Indirect Objects among other things) and Accusative (direct object)-- it is based on a different stem.

So, the nominative form is Πολις, however, the genitive form would be Πολεος (Poleos). You would see these forms in a dictionary as "Πολις, Πολεος".

Now, since the Greek irregular noun ending for singular genitive is -ος, you remove that from the genitive to get the stem, thus, Πολε-. The Greek ending for plural nominative is -ες, so we add that on to the stem, forming:

Πολεες (Polees)

Since pronouncing two epsilons right next to each other is silly (Two adjacent vowels do not form long vowels in Greek), they contract into an epsilon-iota digraph (ει or ei). This is called contraction. BTW, a digraph is a set of two vowels pronounced as one.

And so, you end up with Πολεις (Poleis, pronounced phonetically as po-lays). Add the nekro- there and you'll get Necropoleis, which is the correct plural form of Necropolis. Dictionaries also show Necropolises as correct, because of Anglicization.

Hope you enjoyed that little linguistics lesson.

On a side note, let's look at some derivatives of Polis and Nekros:

From Wikipedia:

Q u o t e:
"A number of words end in the word "-polis". Most refer to a special kind of city and/or state. Some examples are:

* Astropolis — star-scaled city/industry area; complex space station; a European star-related festival.
* Cosmopolis — a large urban centre with a population of many different cultural backgrounds; a novel written by Don DeLillo.
* Ecumenopolis — a city that covers an entire planet, usually seen in science fiction
* Megapolis, built by merging several cities and their suburbs.
* Metropolis can refer to the mother city of a colony, the see of a metropolitan archbishop or a Metropolitan area — a major urban population centre.
* Necropolis 'city of the dead' — a graveyard.
* Technopolis — city with high-tech industry; room full of computers; the Internet.

Other refer to part of a city or a group of cities, such as:

* Acropolis, 'high city' — upper part of a polis, often citadel and/or site of major temple(s).
* Decapolis, a group of ten cities
* Dodecapolis, a group of twelve cities
* Pentapolis, a group of five cities
* Tripolis, a group of three cities, retained in the names of a Tripoli in Libya and a namesake in Lebanon"

Also from Nekros we get words such as Necropsy (identical to Autopsy), Necrosis (Death of a group of cells), Necromancer (lol), Necrophagan (Group of species who feed on carrion).
TL;DR: Because Necropolis is Greek, not Latin, the correct plural form is Necropoleis, not Necropoli.

[naughtier]

haha, interesting

[Emilie Autumn]

eyah when u say this every one is retarded and goe L2speek tards Fking noobs T_T lol nice tho =P

[Liquid Malfunction]

Necropolises lol I don't know

[darkangelmcg]

Necropolises lol I don't know

Thats what I thought. . .

[Pyromancer]

I use Necropolises. I know the word derived from Greek but I use it as English and in English so I use English plural form.

Or are there anybody who use "bureau" plural as bureaux because it derived from French?

For those who don't know French, nouns ended with -eu, -eau and -au can be made into plural form by adding 'x' at the end in French.