Origin of Slang Term "Boni"?

[Gentlegamer]

Romani domum ite!

Dixi.

 

[Huw]

Grammar ninjae care.

Thou art most wickéd

Great pretentiousness trap: plural of "opossum". Any takers

 

[werk]

Thou art most wickéd

Great pretentiousness trap: plural of "opossum". Any takers

Since we're off-topic, your post made me think of this!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bezitted/1731893232/

I just keep laughing at that...

 

[Umbran]

English is not nice, comfy, orderly language. As others have noted - in dark alleys, it mugs other languages and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar. Do you think that after committing such molestation that English is going to be particularly prissy about where it sticks which plural?

 

[avr]

On a mailing list I'm on, people for whom English isn't their native language tend to use the tem boni as the plural for bonus, and malus as the opposite of bonus. Grammar ninjas have no power over them.

 

[FireLance]

This makes me wonder whether the colloquial term for a penalty, malus, would be pluralized as mali.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

This makes me wonder whether the colloquial term for a penalty, malus, would be pluralized as mali.

Nope; "malodorous". And the plural of "malodorous" is "convention".

 

[kenobi65]

Actually, boni is the plural of Bono, not bonus. If you think some vocalist is similar to U2, you might call him a bono, and if you get more than one such vocalist together, you can call them boni.

Granted, the situations in which you can use this plural are few and far between...

Especially now that Sonny Bono is dead.

 

[Hairfoot]

You make this language pedant very happy

This one, too!

 

[Kunimatyu]

My classics trained fiancee blames this on 1) bad latin and 2) people who want to sound smarter than they are. And yes, it does occasionally happen in the real world, too. For example, the true latin-based plural of octopus is really octopodes, not octopi.

Forget that -- octopussies for the win!