Word.ws English Dictionary

-ii

/aɪ/

-ii suffix: used to form nonstandard, uncommon, often humorous alternative plural forms of nouns that end in -us, -is or a similar sound. Also the misspelling of -i.

Suffix

-ii

  1. Used to form nonstandard, uncommon, often humorous alternative plural forms of nouns that end in -us, -is or a similar sound.
    • Elvis + -ii → Elvii
    • penis + -ii → penii
    • virus + -ii → virii
    • walrus + -ii → walrii
    • fetus + -ii → fetii
    • stewardess + -ii → stewardii
    • Airbus + -ii → AirbiiExamples

Also used as

-ii is also the misspelling of -i.

Origin of -ii

From rebracketing of plural forms like radii (plural of radius), borrowed from Latin. Latin forms the nominative plural of second-declension nouns by replacing -us with -ī, which results in plural forms that end in -iī for nouns with singulars ending in -ius. Some English speakers occasionally extend -ii to form nonstandard plural forms of English nouns that end simply with the letters -us or with other letter sequences with a similar pronunciation (such as -is /ɪs/).

Questions about -ii

What does -ii mean?
-ii means used to form nonstandard, uncommon, often humorous alternative plural forms of nouns that end in -us, -is or a similar sound.
What part of speech is -ii?
-ii is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -ii?
-ii is pronounced /aɪ/.

Words near -ii in the dictionary

  1. -ifies
  2. -iform
  3. -ify
  4. -ifying
  5. -ign
  6. -ii
  7. -ikin
  8. -ile
  9. -ilide
  10. -illiard
  11. -illion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ii (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “-ii.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ii. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.