David Montgomery sends in this pair of chiasmuses? chaismi? chiasmae? Both are from October 18.
I went to Merriam-Webster online to look up the plural, but they don’t provide one; nor does the M-W Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition. The example given online of the use of chiasmus cleverly avoids committing to a particular plural:
The word comes from Greek, so chiasmae would be confusing a Greek root and a Latin plural form, but stranger things have occurred in English. I think Sam Bray had it right: find a way to duck the issue.
File this under “conversations that seldom actually occur” — which is, of course, the joke.
