re: These Data, Those Data page 5

(singular of plural 'agenda')

Agendum, obviously.

How is that obvious? It's not in my dictionary.

Well, 'gullible' isn't in a single dictionary, and look how often it' used...
Mark Edwards

Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request

(Latin, neut. pl. of gerundive of /agere/ 'do')

There's a reason it's called Concise. The singular form is so obvious to literate users it would have been redundant to spell it out.

¬R

Data is not just an uncountable like sand . . . .

Sand is quite amenable to count uses
"The bright white sands found in tropical and subtropical coastal settings are ground-up limestone."
"Unlike the haunting so-called booming sands that Marco Polo and others discovered among the isolated dunes of storied deserts, the noises sand makes are not always mellifluous."
"Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders - the glistening white sands of New Mexico."

"Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, vehicles that look like prehistoric beasts move across an arctic wasteland, extracting the oil sands."
as are (as you quite correctly point out) data.

Would it surprise you to know that I also talk about "these agenda" and "the third agendum on the list" ...?

Yes; pleasantly. You have obviously avoided unpleasant encounters with lamp-posts, but what sort of reactions do you generally get as a consequence of such uses?

"All right" is correct and "alright" is all wrong.

Hello, George. I would like to disagree with that.

I think both have their place. Thy mean (to me) two different things.

Alright? Even if it's not all right. (I made a typo "thy" which is obviously not correct.)

(Oh, and "octopi" was never a plural form of octopus except to the "ain't" school of speech: the recommended form ... have not OED'ed it (new coinage there?) always been "octopuses", with "octopodes" as a pedantic and now-deprecated but technically passable form.)

If octopodes is the plural of octopus, then the singular of antipodes is antipus.

Stephen
Lennox Head, Australia

(Latin, neut. pl. of gerundive of /agere/ 'do')

There's a reason it's called Concise. The singular form is so obvious to literate users it would have been redundant to spell it out. ¬R

That may once have been the case.

Stephen
Lennox Head, Australia

Agendum, obviously.

How is that obvious? It's not in my dictionary.

Sorry, you have to look under "agere" it's the future passive participle.

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
(Poe)

How is that obvious? It's not in my dictionary.

Sorry, you have to look under "agere" it's the future passive participle.

Oh, right, I have to have a Latin dictionary.
So much for "obvious."

Stephen
Lennox Head, Australia

Seriously: Grin (or, if you can't grin, wince imperceptibly) and bear it.

Bob, thank you for your kind (and wise) words. I fear you are right, and I think I should learn to "chill out" as they say nowadays. I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite because I would probably say camera obscuras rather than camerae obscurae, purely out of cowardice I'm sure. I might well employ the Latin form in writing, perhaps italicised, or seek an alternative formulation, depending on the intended audience. I should remember the concept of appropriate register which I encountered in the study of my beloved second language, French. On reflection I am a thorough hypocrite because I take a gleeful pride in acquiring gutter-French phrases and usages. My ideal is to be mistaken by Parisians for a Toulon pimp. Silly I know.