Is it okay to pluralize the word "status"?

Question

Am I using the plural noun statuses correctly in the following sentence given that each of them has a distinct status?

"Both the girl and the guy are hiding their social statuses from each other."

Should I say status instead?

It's done, and generally accepted, at least in less formal writings. — Hot Licks, May 06 '16 at 12:07
Duplicate of http://english.stackexchange.com/q/877/14666 "What is the plural form of "status"?" — Kris, May 06 '16 at 12:36
I agree with lux, to me the word "states" sounds more right to pronounce, but it may be wrong. I'd like to hear what an english speaking person thinks about it. — funder7, Mar 23 '21 at 21:19

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '16 at 11:58

4

The OED refers to three possible plurals, two of which are now rare.

Status (rare)

Statuses (now usual)

Statusses (rare).

Inflections: Pl. (rare) status /ˈsteɪtjuːs/ , (now usu.) statuses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/ , (rare) statusses /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/ .

Etymology: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin status.

answered May 06 '16 at 11:58

WS2

64,657

2

Better to include a link to the resource. – Kris May 06 '16 at 12:19
3

@Kris OED is subscription only – bib May 06 '16 at 12:31
@Kris This is the link but unless you are a UK Council Tax payer, and your municipal library has given you a log-in, I'm afraid it is subscription-only. – WS2 May 06 '16 at 18:02

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 06 '16 at 11:49

1

Well, the Anglicized plural would indeed be statuses, although if you wanted to get fancy I suppose you could use status, which is actually the Latin plural (since it's a 4th declension not a 2nd declension noun, in case anyone's interested.... If it were 2nd declension, the plural would be stati.)

answered May 06 '16 at 11:49

Nick

2,420

Very interesting. When we borrow foreign words, do we necessarily bring down the derivative forms or use English derivations? Btw, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=status https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/status#Etymology_4 – Kris May 07 '16 at 15:11
I guess it's a fairly even mix of Latin plurals and derived plurals... (Also i was referring to the noun form of status that is in fact 4th declension, rather than the perfect passive participle-turned-noun which is 2nd). – Nick May 07 '16 at 16:26

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered May 06 '16 at 14:32

Here's the sole intelligent reason for having a gender-neutral third personal pronoun meaning indifferently 'he or she", "him or her", "his or her".
Let's adopt for this the made-up word ig (declined ig, ig, igz) and then say "each hiding igz social status from the other". No awkward plural needed!
If there are more than 2 people, we can say "others".

Is it okay to pluralize the word "status"?

3 Answers3