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@inthehands media/medium; index/indices; criteria/criterion (that one especially).

@nicklockwood
YES.

I worked at a company once where we were modeling various marketing channels (print media, broadcast media, etc), and long story short, we ended up with a database + codebase where `Media` was singular…over my strenuous objections. I made a wisecrack about “pluralses” that got utterly blank looks from a full room, and it was then that I realized every one of us is truly alone in this mortal life.

@inthehands flashback to a time I worked on a codebase where we had a data type that was an array of arrays of text labels.

When dealing with the inner array it was usually referred to as "texts" (dubious but bearable), however references to the outer array were named "textss"

@nicklockwood
Absolutely required to say all this is a Gollum voice:

“The textsssss, we loves them, our pluralses”

@inthehands oh ha ha, you beat me to it.

@nicklockwood great minds etc etc

@inthehands @nicklockwood this thread is goldsss

@michaelc @AdrianRiskin
Yes, the singular back-formations “verticee” and “parenthesee” are endemic! They might even be a language change in program, like “tamale.” (The Spanish word is “tamal;” English “tamale” is a back-formation from the Spanish plural “tamales.”)

@inthehands @AdrianRiskin Oh, interesting. I didn't know that, but it makes sense from the Latin I know.

@zerotensor Yeah, I’d say that “vortexes” might be widely accepted enough at this point to call it also correct, and I’d even venture that “forums” is preferred in software contexts. Language change in progress before our very eyes!

@bancks @AdrianRiskin
Yeah, I think “schemas” is the new correct verging on only correct form in tech contexts, much like “forums” vs “fora”

@pyrtsa @nicklockwood
It’s a tricky one. Merriam-Webster, Oxford English, and American Heritage all say that it can take either a singular or plural verb, though they all color that analysis slightly differently.