"Species" the plural form

[John Nelson]

WED 1 Dec 902am

Friends:

        My colleague and student of Anglo-Saxon linguism offers these thoughts
on "Specie"/"Species", with an additional idea that anybody worried
about this sort of thing ought to expect to see "specie" as the singular
for "species" more and more in the future. And, that the word
"specieses" may eventually arise as a plural of "species"!

        later JOHN NELSON, USCH

-------- Original Message --------
From: "Scott J. Gwara" <gwaras at garnet.cla.sc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Specie - species]
To: nelson at sc.edu

John,
The Latin word species is, like dies 'day', a fifth-declension noun,
with a plural form species.  When borrowed into English in the late
sixteenth century, the word was not fully assimilated.  By analogy
(ignorance), commoners think that it's a plural form and that specie
is singular.  In fact, specie is the ablative form of species borrowed
from the prepositional phrase "in specie," and it entered English
separately around the same time as species.  English generally forms
plurals by adding <s> to the ends of words, and species falls under this
rule, reinforced by the competing term specie, which seems to have a
special function.  I think that, because scientists like to be
linguistically accurate, they use the proper Latin form which represents
a direct (ill-fitting) borrowing from Latin.
S.