Kevin
November 7, 2020
The Plural of...
If you have ever taken a science class you learned about genus. What you may not have learned is the plural form of the word and how to use it correctly. In this article, you will learn what genus is, where it originates, its synonyms, and how to use the word in context. Pay close attention so you can show off your in-depth knowledge of this topic next time you are in class.
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According to Webster’s Dictionary, genus is:
The word Genus originates from Latin and dates all the way back to the 1550s. It was first used to define kinds or a class of things such as race, kind, family, birth, descent, or origin. Gene means to give birth or beget and can refer to the procreation of families or tribes.
When studying biology you will find genus between the family and species ranks of biological classification. Taxonomic ranks break down different organisms or species into more and more specific categories. This system is known as Linnaean, named after Carl Linnaeus a Swedish botanist. He first used this system to place organisms into categories based on similarities anatomically, morphologically, and physiologically.
Genus is part of a system involved in the classification of organisms, otherwise known as taxonomy. From top to bottom it goes Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. If you noticed, the order goes from more general to very specific. Biological classification is also known as binomial nomenclature. When naming a species the genus name is the first word used followed by the epithet, it is then put in italics or within quotes. In order for species to be grouped together, they must have monophyly which means groups based on shared derived characteristics or traits that set apart this group from another. Morphyly was first defined by a German biologist by the name of Willi Hennig. The scientific names provide a standard that is used and respected all over the world. For example, the genus for foxes under the dog subfamily canidae is “vulpes.”
It turns out genuses is not a word. The correct way to use the plural form of genus is genera. You may also confuse genus with the word Genesis, these are very different things. In the American English language, we typically want to add ‘es’ at the end of a word to make it plural. In order to find the correct way to make a word plural, we must first look at the root language and follow its rules.
The Latin language is not often studied any longer and is considered a dead language. However, when looking at an English word that has its root in a Latin word, it is important to understand why we need to ignore our brains telling us to add ‘es’ and instead use the plural form genera. The Latin “genus” or “genera” is a third-declension noun
If you are looking at how to make different words plural, you will find that this is often the case with words that Americans are oft confused with, we tend to forget that Germanic languages come from a melting pot of different languages. The modern American English language we use today is made up of other Germanic languages and Latin. This is fitting considering America is also a melting pot of different cultures and languages and we have borrowed from those cultures to create not only the American culture but also American English.
