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  • Shome mishtake, shurely? What I see in the full OED is Pl. (rare) status /ˈsteɪtjuːs/, (now usu.) statuses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/, (rare) statusses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/. That's to say the first pronunciation and the final spelling are both "rare" (I'm not aware I've encountered either), so I can't see how that quirky pronunciation would be "endorsed" by Dictionary of Modern English Usage in an (updated?) 2009 edition. Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 18:15
  • @FumbleFingers: the 2009 edition of Fowler's is not updated, aside from a preface. It basically is a re-print of the content of the original edition. While "/ˈsteɪtjuːs/" is rare, it seems to be the only pronunciation given by the OED that corresponds to the spelling "status". The other pronunciations correspond to other spellings. These two sources seem to agree that "-uses" is preferable, but if you use the spelling "us" for the plural, it should be pronounced as /juːs/.
    – herisson
    Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 18:48
  • I'm sure you're right that it's the only pronunciation given by the OED that corresponds to the spelling "status". But as I said, I'm not aware I've ever come across a written instance of status that's obviously intended to be seen as plural, regardless of how the writer might have thought it was pronounced. Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 18:58
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    ...it may interest you to know (if you didn't already), that quite a few people (myself included) understand busses as the plural of [electronic circuit] bus, and buses as the plural of public transport vehicle] bus, in their written forms (but they're both pronounced the same). Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 19:01
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    Or perhaps the plurality of “status” might often be ambiguous anyway. Consider I want everyone to update their Facebook status, and how it compares to I want everyone to raise their right arm[s]. Maybe some Victorian grammarian got mixed up and mistakenly decided some earlier writer must have intended the plural, so it must have been a valid usage. (That perspective obviously didn't catch on though! :) Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 19:08