Re: The millennial dinosaur

[NJPharris@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/13/99 11:02:17 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
qilongia@yahoo.com writes:

< millenii < millenium, Lat. = one thousand [years];

As George mentioned, millennium requires two n's, since it is a compound of 
mille, "1000", + annus, "year" (< at-no-s, cf. the Gothic cognate athns).  
BTW, milleni means, IIRC, "by thousands", in the same sense as "by twos", "by 
threes", etc.

>          derived from a possessive where nouns ending
>          in -um or -us are transformed to -i, but where
>          also the word ends in -ium or -ius, the
>          transformation is -ii, as the original "i"
>          does not get altered; so = the millenium's;;

Actually, the -ii that would result from attaching the genitive suffix -i to 
a word ending in -ius or -ium usually was simplified to a single -i: 
millenni(o)- + -i > millennii > millenni.  But this phenomenon is generally 
ignored for scientific purposes.

--Nick P.