octopusses

1. 1
   nounnonstandard

   Plural of octopus. Nonstandard; the usual spelling is octopuses.

   Can you imagine that Doc living all by himself here, with snakes and starfish and octopusses?

   1956, Richard Rodgers; Oscar, II Hammerstein

   Gilpatric observed many fights between octopusses. When one is badly damaged, another will often appear in search of an easy meal.

   1978, Diver

   Note

   A doubled-s spelling of the plural that does reach print but is marked nonstandard. Careful writing uses octopuses. It appears in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Pipe Dream (1956) and in Diver (1978), so it is more than a slip of the keyboard. The Latin-looking octopi has its own problem: octopus is Greek in origin, not a Latin noun in -us. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present form.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of octopus.

   Note

   The verb behind this form draws a cluster of images from the animal: reaching into many things at once, spreading out in long arms, overloading one outlet with many plugs, or growing far beyond its first purpose. It can also mean simply hunting octopuses. It takes a singular subject (a project octopusses), and the doubled s raises the same spelling question as the noun plural.

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