Serieses? Seriei? Are You Serious?

So, the word ‘series’ is a plural; by definition it is multiple things that are part of an ordered grouping. Like how ‘media’ is actually a plural for ‘medium’ (when talking about art or communication).

If you want to talk about more than one series, how do you modify the word when it’s already a plural? Do we add an ‘es’; ‘serieses’? Do we replace the ‘s’ with an ‘i’; ‘seriei? With ‘media’, modern usage just tacks the word ‘multi’ in front to indicate there are multiple groups of medium types being used. But does ‘multi-series’ work?

Huh. Yeah, I didn’t think so either. All of those are pretty silly. Though, ‘multi-series’ seems the least wacky and awkward to me.

This is a problem we run into a lot in English, mainly because this wonderful, word-loving language of ours is such an amalgamation of rules and words from other languages. This results from the multiple invasions, immigrations, trading and linguistic fashions that swept the British Isles over the centuries.

For instance, ‘cactus’. ‘Cactus’ is a Latin-origin word so we use the rules of the Latin language to make it plural. We remove the ‘us’ from the end and replace it with an ‘i’ to make ‘cacti’. Making it an odd instance when an object is a team-player while alone and independent in a group (‘us’ vs. ‘i’).

But this doesn’t work with Greek-origin words like ‘octopus’. Our instinct is to try to apply the Latin rules and make it ‘octopi’. But that’s wrong, since this word is Greek in origin and Greek uses different rules from Latin. According to What in the Word? the traditional/classic and most proper plural is ‘octopodes’ because it uses the Greek rules for pluralization. The next proper, but less so, is the anglicized variant ‘octopuses’, which uses the English rules for making a word ending in ‘s’ plural.

‘Seriodes’ seems just as silly, though. And just a little like an extra-fibery version of Cheerios™. And I don’t think ‘series’ is a Greek-origin word, anyways.

So, what’s the linguistically proper and least ridiculous plural for ‘series’?

Dictionary.com lists ‘multiseries’ as a related form of ‘series’. But, it’s the only source I found that does.

Merriam-Webster.com says ‘series’ is the plural from of ‘series’. And Answerbag.com concurs, saying that ‘series’ is a type of word called an irregular plural noun. So, ‘series’ should be like ‘fish’ and ‘headquarters’ (in pluralization and singular use, that is).

And this usage is seen in academia. For instance, the aptly named Plural Publishing company’s page about the book series that they publish uses this plural form of ‘series’.

So, I guess that even though it doesn’t sound right to our ears the proper plural of ‘series’ is ‘series’. We then have to rely on words like ‘are’ and ‘is’ or numbers to tell the listener/reader if we mean one series or two. Especially if writing in an academic environment.

Or, if we’re chatting over coffee at a convention we can use the power of modern usage (go, ‘octopuses’!) and use ‘multiseries’ to indicate in just one word in a short sentence that we have more than one series.

Stupid irregular plurals. I think it’s a plot by the fishes.

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2 Responses to “Serieses? Seriei? Are You Serious?”

1. Dan Whitworth says:

   March 28, 2010 at 12:21 am

   To confuse matters even more, what us Yanks call a “season” of a television show is called a “series” by the British, while we use the word “series” to describe the show.
   • Chriss Cornish says:

     March 28, 2010 at 9:34 am

     Really? Dude, and dialect steps in once again to murk-ify the waters further. At least both American English and British English use the word “series” for books.