Is there a proper use of "stimuluses"?

No. Stimuli.

I think there’s a general tendency to regularize plurals in English by appending “s” or “es” rather than using the original plural form of words borrowed from languages like Latin or Greek. I’m not sure there’s any semantic distinction (i.e., difference in meaning or usage), however, between “stimuli” and “stimuluses.”

I guess I just feel like in this context it will be more clear to add layers of definition to possible plural forms of the word.

But I won’t use it if it’s not at all proper. Don’t wanna upset the elitist reviewers, after all. :/

@gasman Not so. When the word comes from Latin, we use “i” (as in “stimulus/stimuli”). But that was never the correct way to pluralize words that come from Greek, where we use “es” (as in “octopus/octopuses”). Of course, this only applies to words with the proper endings. Words with other endings may be pluralized differently whether of Latin or Greek origin.

@blaze626 I don’t think it is an elitist thing. It is a matter of clarity. If you want to get your point across, you need to use words that people understand. Case in point: what does “add layers of definition to possible plural forms of the word” even mean? Since “stimuluses” isn’t a plural form of the word “stimulus” or even a word at all in the first place, there is no definition to which one could add layers of definition (whatever that means).

@SavoirFaire What about apparatus, virus, status, omnibus, syllabus…

Stimulus is a word prevalently and currently devised to stimulate stimulus by government, stimuli is a whole nother thing which we all owned by.
I think the word stimulus is the word of choice unless you are stimulated which could be stimulating.

@SavoirFaire Wikipedia nicely explicates the plural of octopus & agrees with you, noting its Greek plural should be “octopodes,” yet the pseudo-Latin “octopi” is more common. There’s a variety of plural forms (depending on etymology) for words ending in ”-us.” E.g., the plural of “genus” is “genera.”

I looked up “stimulus” in several dictionaries and found no mention of “stimuluses” as an alternate plural. Though it may be more virtuous to be descriptive than prescriptive, dare I say that “stimuluses” is wrong? A google search of stimuluses turns up plenty of usage, however, mostly in the recent context of financial stimuli.

@morphail The plural of “syllabus” is “syllabi’ (as expected), and the rest are derived from Latin in a different way than “stimulus.” The words “apparatus” and “status,” for instance, are both formed using a verb and the suffix ”-tus” (which is different from the suffix ”-us”). Virus has no plural in Latin, so adding ”-es” is a purely English convention. The ”-es” is also added as a matter of convention to “omnibus” because that word is already a pluralized form in Latin (specifically, it is the dative plural of ”omnis”) that was taken into English as a singular noun.

@gasman Indeed. A word can wind up with a ”-us” ending in English for many reasons. “Genus,” for instance, comes from the Latin ”gens,” which in turn comes from the Greek ”genos.” Thus we get “genera” as the plural (since it fits none of the patterns I mentioned above). Etymology is a complicated affair—especially since sometimes the rules are broken for no other reason than because the people incorporating certain words came before the rules were even made!

And yes, I would go out on that limb with you and suggest that “stimuluses” is wrong.

@SavoirFaire “genus” is not borrowed from “gens”, it’s borrowed from Latin “genus”, which has the plural “genera” because it is a third declension neuter noun. The Latin word is not from Greek “genos”, it’s cognate with Greek “genos”. Other third declension neuter nouns are corpus/corpora and onus/onera.

Latin “syllabus” is borrowed from Greek “sillabos”, which apparently was a mistake for “sittubas”, the plural of “sittuba” meaning “parchment label”. So etymologically “syllabus” is already plural.

@morphail Ah, yes. You are quite right about “genus.” I read my dictionary wrong. Latin is my fourth language, so it’s still a bit of a weak spot for me. As for “syllabus,” we get it from the Latin appropriation of the term even though it is probably of Greek origin ultimately. That’s why “syllabi” is an unsurprising pluralization.

Also, I thought you were offering examples of words that ended in ”-us” but didn’t pluralize with an ”-i.” That seems to have been a misunderstanding.

Yes, I should not have included “syllabus”.