On 15 Jul 2015, at 22:52, ann sanfedele <ann...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > >> On 7/14/2015 10:47 AM, Jack Davis wrote: >> Have we decided that it's an Hibiscus coulteri? >> Thanks again, Ann! >> >> J > No, we have decided it ain't - because of the skinny leaves there are jsut > too many dammed hibiscuses On an irrelevant to photography note - I won a > challenge against US/World and Canadian Champion Scrabble player, Joel > Wapnick, some years back In a fairly important tourney when he tried to get > away with HIBISCI. A rare moment in my tourney history. Didn't keep him from > winning that game though. I have beaten him, but not in any signifigant > tourneys. > Still friends though :-) ann >> >>> >>> >>> http://photolightimages.com/aspupload/detail.asp?ID=945
Over here the dictionary that official Scrabble words come from is Chambers, and a Latin plural is not given, so hibiscuses is the plural in UK English too - and that's what is given in Chambers. It's interesting to note, though, the confusion online about the Latin plural, indeed about the gender and even existence of 'hibiscus' - at least one of the online dictionaries claims it is 2nd declension feminine - which doesn't exist! All 2nd declension nouns are masculine or neuter. My print dictionary (Collins) has hibiscum as the Latin for marsh-mallow, and does not have 'hibiscus' at all. Hibiscum is 2nd declension neuter, so the (nominative) plural is hibisca. In this form 'hibisci' exists as the genitive singular: 'of the marsh-mallow'. Some of the online etymologies give 'hibiscus', which is masculine, as a later Latin form (presumably later than the Golden Age) but they don't say how much later. So it changed gender during the course of its development - a genuine paradigm shift. In this later form 'hibisci' is the correct Latin nominative plural. So there you have it, in case anyone asks why it was disallowed. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KAfKFKBlZbM B P.s. I think it's H. moscheutos, which would make it a swamp marsh-mallow, and therefore a cross-language pleonasmic tautological redundancy. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
