Crisis, crises, crisies
Writing for Business
Which is correct?
Answer: b
Explanation:
I was writing about crisis management recently and it occurred to me that the plural of crisis is another of those tricky irregular ones. Sure enough, I found 30,200 Google hits for crisies and 101,000 for crisises. Both wrong. Maybe there are four sure things: death, taxes, crises and spelling errors.
Death and taxes is a phrase that resonates. Here’s the original quotation:
Quite a few words that end in is are pluralized by changing is to es. Here are a few more examples:
singular | plural |
axis | axes |
analysis | analyses |
basis | bases |
diagnosis | diagnoses |
ellipsis | ellipses |
emphasis | emphases |
hypothesis | hypotheses |
neurosis | neuroses |
oasis | oases |
parenthesis | parentheses |
thesis | theses |
Grammarist provides a handy reference for irregular plurals from which I swiped the examples above. You should go look — she’s got lots more.
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