Am I using the plural noun statuses correctly in the following sentence given that each of them has a distinct status?
"Both the girl and the guy are hiding their social statuses from each other."
Should I say status instead?
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It's done, and generally accepted, at least in less formal writings.– Hot LicksCommented May 6, 2016 at 12:07
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Please see a good dictionary.– KrisCommented May 6, 2016 at 12:20
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2Duplicate of english.stackexchange.com/q/877/14666 "What is the plural form of "status"?"– KrisCommented May 6, 2016 at 12:36
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1What about "states"?– luxCommented May 6, 2016 at 18:41
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I agree with lux, to me the word "states" sounds more right to pronounce, but it may be wrong. I'd like to hear what an english speaking person thinks about it.– funder7Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 21:19
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3 Answers
The OED refers to three possible plurals, two of which are now rare.
Status (rare)
Statuses (now usual)
Statusses (rare).
Inflections: Pl. (rare) status /ˈsteɪtjuːs/ , (now usu.) statuses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/ , (rare) statusses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/ .
Etymology: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin status.
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@Kris This is the link but unless you are a UK Council Tax payer, and your municipal library has given you a log-in, I'm afraid it is subscription-only.– WS2Commented May 6, 2016 at 18:02
Well, the Anglicized plural would indeed be statuses, although if you wanted to get fancy I suppose you could use status, which is actually the Latin plural (since it's a 4th declension not a 2nd declension noun, in case anyone's interested.... If it were 2nd declension, the plural would be stati.)
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Very interesting. When we borrow foreign words, do we necessarily bring down the derivative forms or use English derivations? Btw, etymonline.com/index.php?term=status en.wiktionary.org/wiki/status#Etymology_4– KrisCommented May 7, 2016 at 15:11
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I guess it's a fairly even mix of Latin plurals and derived plurals... (Also i was referring to the noun form of status that is in fact 4th declension, rather than the perfect passive participle-turned-noun which is 2nd).– NickCommented May 7, 2016 at 16:26
Here's the sole intelligent reason for having a gender-neutral third personal pronoun meaning indifferently 'he or she", "him or her", "his or her".
Let's adopt for this the made-up word ig (declined ig, ig, igz) and then say "each hiding igz social status from the other". No awkward plural needed!
If there are more than 2 people, we can say "others".
