Origin of Slang Term "Boni"?

[interwyrm]

I once lost a best on the plural of apparatus.

I was very sad indeed.

 

[Desdichado]

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...

 

[Johnny Angel]

It's a joke. Only some of the Latin words imported into English retain their Latin plurals (antenna, antennae -- for example, and even that is getting less and less common). Bonus is usually pluralized by an English rule, as you observed, 'bonuses.' But in the Latin from which it originated, the plural would be 'boni' in the nominative.

This is not unlike the old joke: "A classics professor walks into a bar. His nose is bleeding and his clothes are torn. He says, 'I just got jumped by a couple of hoodli!'"

Of course, any students of Latin hearing this joke are expected to call out, "That's 'hoodla!'" because although 'hoodlum' is not actually a Latin word, if it were it would be of the neuter gender.

My classics trained fiancee blames this on 1) bad latin and 2) people who want to sound smarter than they are.

Sounding smarter than you are is what studying the classics is for. But psedo-Latin plurals are way too quotidian for anyone who takes pretentiousness seriously. Now, pseudo-Latin inflection by case, that's where you're not just trying to pretentious -- you've actually invested ranks in it.

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.

Both the word and the inflection rule are Greek. It just happens to come to English as something that looks like a Latin noun.

 

[Festivus]

short for Zamboni.

a vehicle used to clear up the ICE skidmarks.

I vote this as the best explanation.

It's a symptom of our times. More and more I see people using cell phone shorthand, cutting words up, and horrible, horrible misspellings and grammar. It makes me sad for the future, because I won't understand half of it.

 

[Johnny Angel]

So, would hippocampi instead be hippocampuses or hippocampodes?

Although 'hippocampus' is originally Greek, it comes to English through the Latin, so we use the Latinized plural. Besides, the rule in Greek isn't adding '-podes' to make the nominative plural, it's adding '-es' to the stem of a 3rd declension noun or adjective. Thus, 'pous, podos' (the second form is the genitive, which contains the actual stem, which the nominitive form often lacks) becomes 'podes.'
Or, you can just take my word for it.

And that's also my reason for lapsing into saying "malus" instead of penalty... and I guess, since I'm not the only non-English person on the internet, that other people also tend to make that error. And then other (English) people read it, think it looks "cool" or "smart"... and propagate it.

Indeed, if I were translating the SRD into Latin, I'd probably use 'malus' for 'penalty.' I've never seen it used as a meta-linguistic joke on gaming boards, but why not, after all?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And here I was, thinking "boni" meant "an oni I'd like to ... er, attend Bible study with."

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

It’s from old UK gay slang, known as polari and popularised by Julian and Sandy in a 1960’s BBC radio show.

It means good!

– oops, no that’s bona, sorry, my mistake.

Vada my red eek.

 

[el-remmen]

'Cause its funny, not that important, rarely comes up and most people know what you mean anyway?

 

[Nifft]

'Cause its funny, not that important, rarely comes up and most people know what you mean anyway?

Grammar ninjae care.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Tewligan]

I once lost a best on the plural of apparatus.

I was very sad indeed.

That's what you get for making bets with Kwalish.