I wonder if any of the previous rash of “anthrax researcher” deaths were due to them also working on hemorrhagic virii and other candy goodness.
Spelling alert: for Dearksheare:
The plural of “virus” is definitely NOT “virii.”
The best choice for correctness and clarity is to use the coined English plural, “viruses.”
Here is a case where trying to create a plural that sounds Latin, when one does not know Latin or not well enough leads to out and out errors.
There is no attested plural form of the Latin work “virus.’ For the Romans, the word “virus” had a collective idea right in the singular. Linguists and students of Latin have concluded that the word “virus” was a second declension singular neuter noun. If such a noun had a plural it would be “vira.”
There is no way the plural could be “virii.” For that to be the case, the singular would have had to be “virius” and the word would have been second declension masculine.
Much discussion can be found on the Web about this topic.
Conclusion: In this unusual case of trying to be erudite by showing you know the word is Latin - Don’t! Rather, stick with the established correct English form for the plural and that form is “viruses.” The alternative is to start on a steep uphill trek of trying to change current vernacular usage and replace “viruses” with the unattested, but grammatically correct Latin plural, “vira.”
http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/plural-of-virus.2805/