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Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

Mutex isn't latin. The plural of mutex is mutexes.

It’s a running joke in the field to have exotic pluralizations. Mutex->mutices is one, box->boxen (by analogy to oxen) is also pretty common.

We need more casual light-heartedness in this line of work considering how much casual bullshit there is.

> there's two hard problems in computer science: we only have one joke and it's not funny.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42046226

> box->boxen (by analogy to oxen) is also pretty common.

Not to mention (from way back when) VAX -> VAXen.

Except it actually is Latin. Both "mutual" and "exclusive" are borrowings from Latin.

No, it's an English word. The fact it's related, distantly, to some words in Latin doesn't mean mutex is Latin.

I'm pretty sure you could construct it in many other modern languages that have some Latin influence as well… So why do you think "index" is a Latin word and "mutex" isn't then?

I don't think "index" is a Latin word? You're probably asking the wrong person, I am quite comfortable to say indexes, and indeed sheeps -- it's an English word I can just put the -S noise at the end to pluralize it and that'll be fine even if (as with ox) there is a special case rule that some people insist matters for this word or that one.

Likewise I'm comfortable with "Can't nobody prove nothing", which I think is a succinct way to express an opinion that would be rather awkward when expressed in the prestige dialects of English instead.

plural of mutex is indeed exmut (exclusive mutation) :)

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