grammatical number - Plurals of "infimum" and "supremum"


The words infimum and supremum are technical terms in mathematics. Should their plurals be infima and suprema or infimums and supremums?



Answer



For mathematicians, the plurals of infimum and supremum are infima and suprema, respectively. Google Ngrams shows that the incorrect plurals infimums and supremums are used roughly equally often (and much less often than the correct plurals), so I don't believe there is actually any asymmetry.


Here is the Google Ngram with the incorrect plurals:enter image description here


They are used so infrequently that they barely show up on an Ngram if you try to compare the usage of the correct and incorrect plurals.


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