Guardian 28,395 – Imogen

97 comments on “Guardian 28,395 – Imogen”

1. Wonderful stuff from Imogen with all the perimeter solutions making it easier than it would have been otherwise I fear. Favourites apart from the above were SYCOPHANT, ISINGLASS (new)…actually they were all superb. WOKE UP made me chuckle.

   A tough challenge but very rewarding, especially when all parsed, which is rare for me.

   Ta Imogen & manehi

2. Difficult but enjoyable puzzle.

   Favourites: EXTRUDE, PREVAIL, ROOKS, IMPOSTURE.

   New for me: for 21d blue = squander or recklessly spend (money); FLYING BUTTRESS; and ISINGLASS (loi) – all of which were easy to guess via the clues.

   Did not parse: the CHO bit of ANCHOVY.

   Thanks, Imogen and manehi.

3. Hard work this morning with a few DNKs – ISINGLASS and BLUING.

   COTD of the day has to be FLYING BUTRESS which was a write-in along with several of the long clues which got me off to a good start. But a tricky little thing and quite a lot of head scratching.

   Thanks Imogen and manehi!

4. I was held up for ages by putting in DISASTER instead of DISTRESS SIGNAL, so couldn’t get the NW corner until I realised my error. As always, Imogen’s clues were excellent – I particularly liked SYCOPHANT, SPEED BUMP, ESTEEM and HIPPOPOTAMUSES. Many thanks to Imogen and manehi.

5. Thanks, manehi, for explaining the parsing of 11A, 12A, 2D and 18D. (I had concluded that B had to be barrel in 12A, and I’m still not entirely convinced by it).
   1A is a particular delight, but there was a lot to enjoy in this.
   Thanks as ever to setter and blogger.

6. Like others, I enjoyed all the long ones, especially the composition of HIPPOPOTAMUSES, and I agree with AlanC @1 re SYCOPHANT and WOKE UP (and the rest of them).

   I did know ISINGLASS from the surrey with the fringe on top’s ‘curtains y’ can roll right down’ from ‘Oklahoma!’

   Many thanks to Imogen for the fun and manehi for the usual fine blog

7. Always pleased to solve an Imogen, although a nice helpful grid was invaluable today. Thought FLYING BUTTRESSES and HIPPOPOTAMUSES were lots of fun.

   Didn’t even come close to parsing ANCHOVY properly, but I imagine I won’t be alone in that today. Thanks to manehi for straightening us out

8. At fish clues I go Oh no… like Hebridean islands, there are hundreds of the buggers. So anchovy was a bung and pray. Meanwhile, isinglass was a nho, so ditto. Guerrilla too was a non-parse. The last few on the left needed check buttoning, so not my best effort. Blue as splurge, rather than fight, was odd too. Hey ho, ta both.

9. Enjoyably defeated today: Failed on ANCHOVY, STYLUSES and SAPPER, and couldn’t parse ANCHOVY even after revealing it. Liked all the four outside clues, IS-IN-GLASS and LEAKAGE.

10. I couldn’t see the parsing of ANCHOVY either. On the whole, a straightforward solve with some gems around the perimeter.
    Thanks to Imogen and manehi.

11. I also found this quite tough, even after securing the perimeter. I didn’t know BLUING or the coho salmon.

    Liked all the long ones. Favourite was probably ISINGLASS.

    EXTRUDE makes me think of O Level geography, magma and igneous rocks.

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi

12. Like others, the perimeter clues gave me the way in. Took far too long to get SAPPER and EXTRUDE and got ANCHOVY without knowing coho!
    Unlike others, I did know Isinglass – it’s often used in brewing to aid the settling of a beer, which is why many beers are not Vegan friendly.
    Thanks to Imogen and Manehi.

13. Strange how these things happen: I wouldn’t have known COHO, either but it cropped up in a Rodriguez (Picaroon) puzzle just last week (with its alternative spelling, cohoe).

14. I often struggle to get into an Imogen and this was no different with only SWARM resulting from the first couple of passes. Sleeves metaphorically rolled up, I persevered and eventually things began to drop. Though, for me, like some others here, it was a dnf with the interlinked STYLUSES and IMPOSTURE proving my downfall. I looked at that S-Y for ages and had convinced myself that ‘pens’ was a containment indicator! BLUING was a dnk bung in and ANCHOVY slipped the parsing net. My favourites have all been mentioned; I share FLYING BUTTRESS with MaidenBartok @3 as my COTD.

    I corrected two misconceptions today when checking things that raised an initial eyebrow. I’ve only ever thought of ‘tootsies’ as toes rather than feet and I had assumed SAPPER to be a branch of the military with officer ranks included, making ‘private’ rather loose. I’m now disabused on both fronts – though it’s not clear to me whether there actually are sapper officers.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi

15. Thanks Imogen and manehi

    NeilH @ 5: B = BARREL is a standard abbreviation in the oil industry.

16. PostMark @14 You are not the sole person thinking that ‘tootsies’ were toes. I was in step with you.

17. Penfold @11 – I’m glad it brought to mind geology for you. My father always uses EXTRUDE in a more lavatorial context….

18. Funnily enough I found this one easier than yesterday’s and thought there were some lovely clues – but I still had to make use of the dictionaries and occasionally the check button.

    HIPPOPOTAMUSES sprang immediately into my mind on reading wallow – then took a while to parse it and there were a few I couldn’t parse. And I had to reveal BLUING.

    Loved TUTSI (another homophone I got – getting better at these). Other favourites were SYCOPHANT, GUERRILLA, ISINGLASS (which I had never heard of) and, like many others, FLYING BUTTRESS

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi

19. PM @14 from a friend – ‘Sapper is really a term for privates-officers usually adopt the term when saying “I’m a Sapper” as in Blythe Sappers’

20. http://www.blythesappers.co.uk/

21. Hippoptami is the plural, but the abuse is rampant – like octupuses and octopi – only octopi is the solecism in that instance. Latin and Greek plural forms …

    Made hard work of the entertaining puzzle.

    Ta for the useful blog (COHO very distant mental acquaintance).

22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjnOj9O16_I for the Flanders and Swann classic…

23. I thought this was going to be easier than it was when some of the long clues went in. Like Eileen I was helped by having come across COHO in another puzzle. I shall be stuck with The Hippopotamus Song in my head all day now.

24. For the first time ever, I think, I resisted giving that link. 😉

25. Andy @ 21 – I thought Hippopotamus has a Greek root too? Anyway, as any pretentious dead language pedant knows, the only acceptable form is octopodes 🙂

    As for the crossword, my first impression that I’d probably have half a chance turned out to survive contact with the actual grid for once – three of the four long outside ones went in quickly (FLYING BUTTRESS held me up there) and even when I slowed up it never turned into a trudge thanks to some entertaining cluing.

    Decent crossers for ANCHOVY helped with my lack of salmon knowledge, though I spent way too much time before I had them trying to get somewhere by taking SALMN or ALMN as fodder. Ho hum…

    Ta both

26. Super crossword , thank you for the blog. Nice to see ISINGLASS return, used to be a favourite of setters. BLUE is a strange word in this context but quite correct, I think we use “blow” instead these days. ” A month ” put me off because of the A at the end of the word , I thought this was the A before the month backwards rather than part of the month itself.
    I also thought Sappers were a particular type of soldier, maybe involved in engineering, bridge building etc but my knowledge here is scanty at best.

27. SimonS @5: been out of the oil industry for a while now, but the abbreviation for barrel was bbl then

28. [Eileen@24 As Mae West said “I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.”]

29. Thanks to Imogen and manehi.
    I needed manehi’s help with quite a lot of parsing and there’s something about bunging in guesses that’s just unsatisfying – for me this was a bit like swimming through porridge but no doubt that’s just me on the day.
    Nice to see a peripheral (I)RISH reference on the day that’s in it.

30. Enjoyed this, with the long anagrams a generous introduction before the bottom half became more tricky. With several crossers already in place, and triggered by the mention of “aeronautics” I rather dashed in Flying Fortress for 27ac, before the seemingly ubiquitous (in crosswords, anyway) TIRAMISU made me realise the impetuous error of my ways…

31. I also had the problem of misreading “pens” as a containment indicator for STYLUSES – which is doubtless why I never got it.

    [I knew the fishy stuff for ISINGLASS, so I was always puzzled by the “ISINGLASS curtains” on the Surrey With the Fringe On Top in Oklahoma. Today at last I looked it up, and discovered that in the USA it also means thin transparent sheets of a mineral like mica, an entirely plausible thing to make curtains out of.]

32. 21a blue is a homophone for blew, right? No indicator of that in the clew! You blow money when you overspend!

33. For those open to a different Hippo riff, I offer you The Effervescing Elephant by Syd Barrett, original member of Pink Floyd and tragic victim of 60’s psychedelia. The hippo occupies a stanza to himself in the middle: there can’t be many other songs out there incorporating the phrase ‘hippo plankton food’.

34. Daniel @32, see Chambers defn 2. vt to squander. New to me, spent ages think it must be that but it can’t be. Good old Chambers, as ever.

35. Daniel@23: I don’t think there’s any homophone involved – apparently “blue” has in its own right the meaning “spend recklessly” but it’s news to me and I can’t come up with a reference.

36. (Must get a dictionary…)

37. “styli” anyone?

38. [PostMark @33 Well, if you’re looking for alternative bonkers Hippopotamus songs, there’s always Sparks]

39. Not having solved 17ac and with all other crossers in place for 18d convinced myself that “impudence” must be “gall” with a word for “state” reversed inside it. Much time subsequently wasted looking for a word to fit!.

40. Thanks both. We’ve done octopi before and established that the word came into English from scientific Latin, octopi is correct and octopodes is hypercorrection.

41. Thanks to Imogen and manehi. Enjoyable puzzle but a couple of “fishy” words caused a bit of trouble – coho and isinglass were new ones on me.

    My only real quibbles are with 11 across. As far as I can tell “executed” doesn’t necessarily mean “beheaded”. If someone is executed by lethal injection and their head pops off something has probably gone wrong. The other gripe I have is with the definition. If I was being pedantic (me?), only the white rooks start the game on the first rank, the black ones reside on the eighth.

42. Penfold et al, somewhere out there there’s also a very ‘shaggy’ one, which a mate of mine with young ‘uns uses as a lullaby, about talking to a hippo on the telephone…

43. The good week continues. Thanks both.

44. Not starting Imogen till lunchtime can mean the wrestling goes on well into the evening, but this was as steady a solve of this setter as I have ever managed. It really helps that I now know how many Rs there are in GUERRILLA. There was a hold up at the end with what proved to be STYLUSES, eked out letter by letter… it must end with an S… T looks best bet for the second letter… Is there a word STY*U*ES? (Some time later) Yes there is!

45. Hi Tyngewick @40 – we’ve ‘done octopi’ several times, at length, but I don’t recognise your conclusion. The plural of octopus is octopuses (or octopodes – now archaic). If octopus were a Latin word, the plural would be octopi – but it’s Greek – octopous. See here

46. Hi Eileen @45 – we could always say that octopus is a Latin word – fourth declension!

47. No, it’s no good, I’ve stared at manehi’s explanation of WOKE UP and I still don’t get it. UP in court is fine but how does WOKE = PC?

48. Eileen @45: If it’s Greek, could it perhaps be octopodae?

49. Great fun, though the only long’un I got right away was 1a. The two vertical ones I didn’t get till this morning, got the horizontals last night. Thanks to Imogen and manehi.

    Thanks for parsing WOKE UP. I’d never have gotten that, even though both PC and WOKE are from my own country. Actually, I’m not sure I like WOKE for PC; “woke” is a state of mind and PC is a kind of speech or behavior.

    GUERRILLA is almost an anagram of “irregular,’ which delayed me for a bit. I supposed it’s too late to say that “guerrilla” means “little war” in Spanish, and doesn’t
    mean a person fighting one.

    The surface of 27a makes no sense.

    I don’t know “Oklahoma!” as well as Eileen, so the curtains escaped me.

    I knew COHO from a British Columbia song, “Where the Coho Flash Silver All over the Bay.”

    Bluing isn’t a variant of blowing, it’s a word on its own, meaning “to spend extravagantly or wastefully.” squander.”

    [ginf@42 You remind me of

    Once there was an elephant
    Who tried to use the telephant.
    No, no — I mean an elephone
    Who tried to use the telephone.
    Whate’er it was, he got his trunk
    Entangled in the telephunk.
    The more he tried to get it free
    The louder buzzed the telephee!
    I think I’d better end my song
    Of elephunk and telephong.]

50. I agree with @41 Raider. ‘execution’ has no meaning in the clue. The head deletion indicator is ‘start off’.

51. Dicho @46 -but then the plural would be octopus (with a long ‘u’)!
    I didn’t express myself well above: if octopus were a Latin word, it wouldn’t mean ‘eight-footed’ – that’s ‘octipes’.

    William @48 – No, that’s octopodes!

    [Me @24 – I’m wishing i’d resisted this one, too. 😉 ]

52. In 4d, it’s not ‘run faster’ leaving United but the other way around. It always irks me when I see this in clues. In my own puzzles, I try to avoid these mistakes.

53. Let’s have the same discussion about hippopotamus now. ????hippoipotamus??

54. I checked my OED to see what Oxford had to say on octopus, and they gave “plural octopodes, Anglicised to octopuses”. They cite modern Latin (mid 18th c.) octopus, presumably in scientific writings of the time, but it’s not clear whether the word came into colloquial English through modern Latin or in parallel.

55. Les @ 52

    Given Imogen’s experience as a setter and as crossword editor of The Times I’d be inclined to give him more than the benefit of the dout.

    In this case I don’t think there’s a mistake: once you’ve generated ‘transfer’ you leave U (behind).

56. I can’t grasp what’s going on with all this octopus stuff Surely it’s just 1 octopus, 2 octopuses, 3.14 octopi?

57. 11A Agree with others that beheaded isn’t the same as executed.
    12A. PEED for ’emptied water’ – really? Difficulty compounded by B= barrel which I DNK.
    8D. Not sure why book = OT. Books maybe. Surely the OT is a collection of the book of Genesis, the book of Job etc?
    Always struggle to get on Imogen’s wavelength though so maybe it’s me.
    Thanks for the blog.

58. William @ 47: PC = Politically Correct = Woke

    It is always a source of bemusement to me how two phrases words which start life as meaning “holding the belief that racial prejudice is not OK” can become terms of abuse so quickly.

59. Two phrases, obviously, not phrases words

60. [Valentine @49, that’s a delight!]

61. PostMark @53 You, as a regular participant in this forum, are surely not surprised by this collision of pedantries. Sometimes I find these prolonged exchanges engaging and informative – as a non-mathematician, I followed the relatively recent spat about mean/median/average with bemused interest. However, in this case, my Classical languages being of a professional standard, while I am at the same time a lifelong and open-minded user, as writer and reader, of current, colloquial English usage, I have to say I find the increasingly embedded warfare over the eight-tentacled swimmer and the river-horse to be especially unenlightening. Sorry to the fellow-participants who feel animated by this matter.

62. Spooner’s catflap @ 61, to change the subject, the use of CHARACTER to mean a reference was used by Conrad in The End of the Tether, chapter lX first page. It was found by Lord Jim of course.

63. Spooner’s catflap @61

    Ouch!
    I am not particularly animated by this matter and I didn’t let myself be drawn by Andy Smith’s comment @21, hoping that it would not open up the ‘increasingly embedded warfare’ but I had to respond to Tyngewick @40 – see me @45, hoping that that would be the end of it.

    Although we have had this discussion (re octopus) several times over the years – and this applies to numerous topics – we are constantly welcoming new commenters, to whom it will be new.

    I assure you that I will not be commenting on this particular point again.

64. Spooner’s catflap @61: I’m not entirely sure what point you’re making about my post. I didn’t make the comment @53. And I’m sure you didn’t take my comment @56 as a serious contribution to or prolongation of the discussion about plurals, which hadn’t particularly animated me either. You admit to being a non-mathematician, in which case the number 3.14 might have been lost on you.

65. I agree with Eric@57
    OT is a collection of books, or a part of one (the bible).
    Never heard of this meaning of WOKE.

66. I’m sure you can buy the collected books of the OT as a single book.

67. Eileen@63 – oops, sorry, didn’t realise I was in a minefield. Where angels fear to tread …

68. Anchovy clue ghastly. Elsewhere some belters. Thanks.

69. Andy+Smith @67 – I’m not blaming you!

70. Eileen @51 I didn’t express myself very well. I meant that we could create a Latin word ending in us – octopus. If we also declare its declension as 4 the debate about plural forms would go away (apart from when we are speaking).

    One sheep, two sheep.
    One octopus, two octopus.

71. Octopuses have 8 arms and no tentacles. Today I ate sepia (cuttlefish). Another cephalopod but with 8 arms and two tentacles.

    It was very tasty!

72. Darn it. And I was so looking forward to dropping the phrase “Oh my! What a lovely bloat of hippopotamodes!” into a casual conversation over the weekend. C’est la vie.
    Good puzzle today, but not as green as expected. I was impressed by the DEAD IN THE WATER anagram.
    Thanks, Imogen and manehi.

73. [I’m having a great laugh out of the contributions today.]

    Dicho@70: I’m with you – I doubt if the (if there is one) plural of octopus is ever used (“how much are those octopus in the window?” would be perfectly acceptable (Are they fresh? What do you expect for six quid? (and so forth))).
    In a spirit of deferring to a higher authority (while there certainly is/are underwear in a helical vortex when the OT is referred to as a “book” that amuses rather than “books” that amuse when the “testament” amuses in its own right (grammatically speaking of course) ?Shakespeare has given us a broad hint as to efficient pluralisation in English using the bee as an example.

74. So glad to hear that the so-called “war on woke” is going under some people’s radar.

75. [I’m just finding all this talk of octopuses ink-credible.]

76. Actually PostMark whilst it’s getting spiky, I made an effort to find out from a fully fledged sapper about your query and got no acknowledgement from you. I thought that was unlike you but a pretty poor show tbh

77. AlanC @76: tbh, not really sure where the spikiness came from but, if it floats some people’s boats, suits me fine. Personally, I thought the last comment I replied to was pompous, sour and unwarranted but that’s just my opinion. Whereas you did, indeed, deserve a reply and my only excuse is I’m trying to make slightly fewer comments than I might have done in the past. I didn’t understand your “from a friend “ actually meant you’d tapped someone up on my behalf. Thought you were referring to you! I thought it amusing, in the context of the query, that none of the folks in the photos on the website looked remotely as if they had been privates! But the link was appreciated.

78. PostMark and Spooner’s cat flap. If I have been mistaken for PostMark in me@53 then I am simultaneously flattered and suitably rebuked. I am afraid that I will still wallow in a bloat of comments, though.

79. Eileen@45. Sorry to prolong the discussion but I think Tyngewick@40 is right. “Octopodes” would be the plural of “octopous”. We use the Latin derivative “octopus” the plural of which is “octopi” though, as it’s now an English word, I would use “octopuses”.
    As I said at similar late stage last time, I’m reminded of the zookeeper who struggled with the plural when ordering two horned pachyderms and ended up with ” Please send me a rhinoceros. Oh, and while you’re at it please send me another.

80. Me above.
    I should have said, as Tyngewick did, that “octopus” is scientific Latin, not classical which would, as you say, be ” octopes”.
    The same goes for “hippopotamos/us, oi/i”.
    I don’t know how the end of my previous comment turned out in bold. I don’t think I could have done that if I’d tried.

81. Pino @79

    Please see the final sentence of my comment @63.

82. Laughed at your ‘from a friend’ comment Mark. Nae bother

83. Alphalpha @35 & Daniel @32: I first came across BLUING in the betting industry, where bookmakers refer to having “blued” their losses, but “copped” their winnings. Though I suppose you could also “blue” what you’d “copped” on the way home from the racecourse.

    Raider @41: the setter has carefully placed a question mark after ‘criminals being executed’ to indicate an acknowledgement of other forms of execution than beheading.

    Les @52: you have to imagine a missing colon: ‘to leave: united’. (SimonS has explained this already @55, but mine works too, I think.)

    [Eileen @24 &51: You seem to have had the same problem as Mae West with regard to temptation. Not sure if she was ever tempted by a discussion of plurals of Latin or Greek words commonly used in English, but who knows?]

    I made the mistake of moving the wrong I in IRISH to the end, so had IRSHI for quite a long time, requiring an impossible rearrangement of the Rs and Ls in GUERRILLA; then my lack of knowledge of salmon was woefully exposed, with a possible ABALONE making both 9a and 13a more difficult than they were until ANCHOVY offered itself. On the plus side, as a beer drinker and a vegetarian I was familiar with ISINGLASS. Last one in was ESTEEM, which was not by any means the first synonym for ‘approval’ that came to mind. Hence it is after midnight and no one will ever read this post. Except possibly manehi, in which case, many thanks for a very easy to read and comprehensive blog.

84. Sorry about the bold, which was meant to apply only to the colon in ‘to leave: united’.

    Les @52: you have to imagine a missing colon: ‘to leave: united’. (SimonS has explained this already @55, but mine works too, I think.)

    [Eileen @24 &51: You seem to have had the same problem as Mae West with regard to temptation. Not sure if she was ever tempted by a discussion of plurals of Latin or Greek words commonly used in English, but who knows?]

    I made the mistake of moving the wrong I in IRISH to the end, so had IRSHI for quite a long time, requiring an impossible rearrangement of the Rs and Ls in GUERRILLA; then my lack of knowledge of salmon was woefully exposed, with a possible ABALONE making both 9a and 13a more difficult than they were until ANCHOVY offered itself. On the plus side, as a beer drinker and a vegetarian I was familiar with ISINGLASS. Last one in was ESTEEM, which was not by any means the first synonym for ‘approval’ that came to mind. Hence it is after midnight and no one will ever read this post. Except possibly manehi, in which case, many thanks for a very easy to read and comprehensive blog.

85. Started off thinking this would be easy, getting three of the four long ones almost as write-ins. Eventually gave up with about half done and just used the reveal button, only to find I still didn’t understand many of them. Thank goodness for 225.

    Lots of words and phrases I’d never heard of, or would never have known they were used in that way (eg blueing) – though I did know isninglass as i brew beer in my kitchen!

    Think I might have to stick to the Indie, Grauniad is far too hard for my tiny brain.

86. Blue was new. Got woke though never heard or used in conversation (in the real world that is). B for barrel … grrr!
    Thanks for explaining coho. Was misdirected by pens as were others.
    Usually read a couple of comments then skip through but highly diverted by some today so went back to start and read most.
    Good stuff.

87. My father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and always called himself a sapper so I didn’t think ‘private’ was a good definition in 17. Otherwise some excellent clues though I had no idea about the salmon.

88. Enjoyed this puzzle. I always thought that “tootsies” were toes, not feet, however.

89. Simon S @15

    Another common abbreviation for BARREL in the oil industry is “bbl”. So where did that other b come from?

90. simonc @89: Your query made me do some – fairly lightweight – research and, should you pop back to this, herewith a paragraph copied direct from wikipedia: The abbreviations Mbbl and MMbbl refer to one thousand and one million barrels respectively. These are derived from the Latin “mille”, meaning “thousand”. This is different from the SI convention where “M” stands for the Greek “mega”, meaning “million”. Outside of the oil industry, the unit Mbbl (megabarrel) can sometimes stand for one million barrels. The “b” may have been doubled originally to indicate the plural (1 bl, 2 bbl), or possibly it was doubled to eliminate any confusion with bl as a symbol for the bale. Some sources assert that “bbl” originated as a symbol for “blue barrels” delivered by Standard Oil in its early days. However, while Ida Tarbell’s 1904 Standard Oil Company history acknowledged the “holy blue barrel”, the abbreviation “bbl” had been in use well before the 1859 birth of the U.S. petroleum industry.

91. During my time in the pub trade in the 1980s I think isinglass had already been replaced with a synthetic product by most breweries. I hope this might appease the vegans.

92. Sadoldsweat @91. I think ISINGLASS is still very much in use for fining beer. There is a synthetic alternative: “polyvinylpolypyrrolidine,” or PVPP, and many other substances are also used, according to this Wikipedia article. I think the only one I’d heard of was carrageen, or Irish moss.

93. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finings

94. I’m surprised the Guardian approved the equating of WOKE and PC. In my mind WOKE is being aware of the problems other people face, especially people of a different ethnicity. Unfortunately now being used by rightwing culture-warriers about anyone whose views they don’t like.

95. I parsed woke up as WE (i I = we) round OK for PC and UP.

96. Eileen passim. As you have remarked, we did ‘octopus’ before, notably in comments on puzzle 27607 by Boatman (https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/09/06/guardian-cryptic-27607-boatman/). I was confident in my assertion, as I recalled that after consulting your big dictionary you had agreed with me that ‘octopus’ had entered English from 18th century Latin, and that you accepted the ‘direct analogy with polypus’ (pl ‘polypi’. The website you refer to doesn’t provide any sources. Where is the evidence that the word came into English from Greek? As I recall, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not have the word ‘octopus’ and 18th century Latin was a much more powerful influence on English than 18th century Greek. Can anyone provide a citation for ‘octopodes’ used in English prior to the use of ‘octopi’? I agree ‘octopuses’ is a better plural but ‘octopi’ is OK. ‘Octopodes’ is probably an invention of 19th Century grammarians.

    Dr Whatson @54: online OED doesn’t contain the words you cite. It says ‘Plural octopuses, octopi, (rare) octopodes’ suggesting that ‘octopi’ is more common than ‘octopodes’ but less so than (the to my mind preferable) ‘octopuses’. Are you sure you are not looking at some lesser work?

97. PostMark@90 They’re called bbl because of the bubbles!

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