Mystery solved

"Where's Angela Lansbury when you need her"

She is doing time for multiple murders and framing people to sell her books.

As for the video nasty croaked carcass cadaver, thats the new must have graphics card technology leap forward.

Probably

This is the same theory used to explain how frogs come to be found entombed (sometimes alive) in coal or rocks (or building foundations*) - it's possible that they entered when small and fed on insects which also entered through small holes.

*"Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal..."

Living off ... what?

Yeha, it has probably grown by eating bugs in the computer.

yup

You get the same thing with some kind of crevice-dwelling toad in Canada IIRC. They just crawl into a little cave whilst small, then just wait for the prey to come to them, and get bigger, and bigger...

Maybe it was smaller...

..then ate all the bugs?

Plural of doofus?

Doofii, shirley?

@ Big Dumb Guy 555

> It's a toad, doofuses.

The plural is 'doofi'

:)

I'm willing to bet

you kissed it just in case...

Differences :

Toads and frogs have many similarities, including the way they look. But there are some basic differences between them. Toads have dry, warty skin, while frogs have smooth, wet skin. Frogs have tiny teeth on both upper and lower jaws, while toads lack any teeth. Frogs have longer hind legs than toads. So frogs jump, while toads hop. Female toads lay there eggs them in long, parallel strings, while female frogs lay their eggs singly, in small or large clumps, on the water surface.

frog == toad

"A distinction between frogs and toads, though common in popular culture, is not made in taxonomy."

- Wikipedia article on "Toad"

The plural

of English words ending in -us is often problematic, as evidenced by the common disagreement over whether a word should become pluralised by adding -es or by removing the -us and adding -i or even -ii.

Obviously, what is right is what is in common usage, so in a sense, everyone who uses one of the above is 'right', if enough other people use it.

But tempers get heated and there is a desire among us grammar nazis to see mere normal people use the 'right' form.

What should guide people into forming correct plurals of -us ending words is a knowledge of how the word is derived from Greek or Latin.

This knowledge is increasingly rare these days. Its absence is a sure sign of State rather than Private education.

Contrary to common belief, many -us ending words do not pluralise 'correctly' by replacing the -us with -i, but simply by adding -es:

Octopus - derivation Greek. Plural Octopuses.

Bus - derivation Greek. Plural buses.

Virus - derivation Latin. No Latin plural. English plural viruses

Syllabus - derivation Latin. Plural syllabuses

However,

Prospectus - derivation Latin. Plural prospecti

Ignoramus - derivation Latin. Technically already a plural (of ignoro).

Whatever you do here to pluralise, ignorami is incorrect.

As readers of Register are all geniuses, they will be pleased to know that the correct plural of genius is not genii, but as I have indicated, geniuses.

When in doubt, google authoritative sources, do not put what you believe to be right as it is so often wrong

Have a nice day

Hippopotamus

Doofus - derivation the American gutter. Plural - whatever you like

Sort of...

All toads are frogs, but there is a taxonomic distinction in that true toads are all members of the bufonidae family. By either measure its a frog. I call Rana pipiens.

taxonomy

Moron ! you say that there is no distinction in taxonomy as in the wiki article , you don't understand taxonomy .

Saying there is no distinction made in taxonomy between frogs and toads is irrelevant as this is like saying a domestic cat is no different than a lion.

As I said before frogs and toads are different in response to a post saying they are the same , I know I'm correct so why don't you go and educate yourself .

Chuckle

"Bus - derivation Greek. Plural buses."

You spend ages waiting for a bus, and then all of a sudden loads of bi come by!

Bus != Greek

It's a shortened form of omnibus (for everyone) in Latin.

And the -ii form is wrong for everything (it happens when replacing the -us with -i in a word ending -ius e.g. radius-radii)

Also, technically octopus/platypus - octopodes/platypodes since these come from the Greek, but hardly anyone uses those.

I half-remember a poem about the plural of rhinoceros, but cant find a link to it

/pendant