What’s the Plural of “Basis”?

Okay, a serious post today; no comic. Here’s a quote fro the July/August Scientific American, page 59. It’s from an article about quantum mechanics:

…In this scenario, a qubit can be in some superposition of the values +1 and -1. Measuring a qubit
involves specifying something called a basis—think of it as a direction.

Now. What do you say when you need to refer to more than one basis? Would you say “basises”? Maybe something you would pronounce “basisees”? Well, the correct plural is ths same as the plural of “base,” like four bases in baseball. And Scientific American got it right! Here’s the next sentence:

Using different measurement bases can yield different results.

I confess I don’t know how to pronounce that version of “bases.” How would you pronounce it? Tell me in the comments.

Here’s a picture from another quantum article:

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The company that manufactures this plastic toy insists that the word “Lego” has no plural form. “Lego” is an adjective, they say. Lots of folks, especially kids, say “Legos” but they’re wrong. Good old Scientific American gets it right! Here’s a quote from the March 2024 issue, page 4, in an article that mentions antibody-drug conjugate (ADC):

The pieces are mix and match, like Lego bricks: a cancer-killing drug, an antibody that clings to tumor cells, and a connector that releases the drug at the right time.

Scientific American March 2024, page 4

Not that you need a picture, but here’s one:

So what do you call those things?

Well, I find it easiest to quote Wikipedia:

A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem’s subject, usually a famous person put in an absurd light, or revealing something unknown or spurious about them. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes are often forced. Wikipedia

I should add that the meter is rather informal.

I subscribe to Scientific American. Recently the renewed a practice of including a page of poetry in their magazine. Seems weird to me, but so far the poems have been pretty much science oriented, so they fit, even if the practice feels funny to me. Their Clerihew page has been littering my desk for a couple months now, and I’m finally getting around to posting about it.

So I challenge you to write a Clerihew and post it. Here’s one off the top of my head:

Rogers George writes Writing Rag
At first he thought it’d be a gag
But comics and grammar go together,
So he wrote a post and then another.

Your turn!

Maybe it’s a subordinate clause lesson, because that’s the key here.

From the June 2021 Scientific American, page 62:

Last line. Shouldn’t that be “to whomever…”? After all, “to” is a preposition, so we should use the objective case, right? Nope.

Here’s the rule:

• Go from the inside to the outside.

What’s inside the prepositional phrase? A noun clause! And “who” (well, “whoever”) is the subject of “needed,” so it gets the nominative case!

So there you have it. Sometimes you can say “to who.”

Well, three.

The Partnership to End Addiction has an ad inside the back cover of the January 2021 Scientific American.

(I added bold for emphasis.)

Here’s the headline:

SOCIAL DISTANCE CAN ALSO BE A SIGN OF ANOTHER EPIDEMIC

And here are the first couple sentences of the text:

Physical distance can keep you safe and healthy. But if an emotional distance forms between you and those closest to you, it may be due to drug or alcohol use.

So three distances, all correct. Go thou and do likewise.