Is there a difference between the above words? I believe I have heard about both "stock indexes" and "stock indices" - would they be one and the same thing?
Yes, there is a difference! Indices was once always used as the plural, but now indexes is usually used - although indices is still used in the sciences...Is there a difference between the above words? I believe I have heard about both "stock indexes" and "stock indices" - would they be one and the same thing?
Hello ASP.Thinker, and welcome to WordReference.For whatever reason this 'indexes' vs. 'indices' bothers me. Here's my understanding of the distinction:
Indices is now and has always been the only plural of the noun 'Index'.
Indexes is the present tense of the verb 'Index'.
example:
n. There are many stock indices.
v. Jim indexes his files alphabetically.
That's because it is a mis-spelling.... because indeces sounds pedantic to me (ha, in this WordReference text-box "indeces" is underlined in red for misspelling).
...
Therefore, whilst I am alive, ‘indexes’ will be the present tense form of the verb, ‘to index’.
As noted above, Google changed that to give you the hits for indices - that's why the google estimates (not real numbers) are essentially the same. You will get a much better idea of the true relative usage by using the Ngram viewer : type in indeces, indexes, indices into the (case sensitive) box and see that indeces is nowhere to be seen, while indexes and indices are similar in frequency (whether in BrE or AmE, even though there may be a slight difference). There is no justification for using indeces at all!Thanks to both JustKate and lucas-sp for the correction, but even spelled "indices", I get only 54,100,000 hits, as opposed to 53,900,000 for "indeces". That still puts "indexes" in first place.
Are they? I just this evening was at the 159th annual Bloomsburg Fair in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, which is not an event whose target audience is made up of self-described grammarians. In the horticultural exhibit hall, where various folk from Columbia and Montour and Northumberland Counties were competing for ribbons in showing off their best vase full of garden flowers or best display of home-grown green peppers, there was a table of exhibits from competitors who were displaying their most handsome spiny, succulent houseplants. The label on the table read not "Cactuses" but "Cacti", and I think even a good portion of those among the fairgoers who would write that they were "Pennsylvanian's" would nevertheless also make a point of pluralizing "cactus" as "cacti". I would therefore conclude that the level of the "threat" to the word "cacti" may be exaggerated.Symposia and cacti are threatened in a similar way
I hope you are right, but I doubt it. Language evolution is not governed by insiders in bubbles of traditional usage (amateur or professional horticulturalists in this case), but by the mass of people. In my opinion, any time I see alternate forms of plural, there is one form gaining on the other. At some point the usage of the less-favored choice moves to "rare", and eventually "archaic." I know from my Computer Science background, where indexes are an important commodity, that people including many foreigners, started using that word regularly in favor of indices. Not to pick on foreigners, but it is always easier to slap on an "s" or "es" than to come up with the other rule.Are they? I just this evening was at the 159th annual Bloomsburg Fair in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, which is not an event whose target audience is made up of self-described grammarians. In the horticultural exhibit hall, where various folk from Columbia and Montour and Northumberland Counties were competing for ribbons in showing off their best vase full of garden flowers or best display of home-grown green peppers, there was a table of exhibits from competitors who were displaying their most handsome spiny, succulent houseplants. The label on the table read not "Cactuses" but "Cacti", and I think even a good portion of those among the fairgoers who would write that they were "Pennsylvanian's" would nevertheless also make a point of pluralizing "cactus" as "cacti". I would therefore conclude that the level of the "threat" to the word "cacti" may be exaggerated.
Or, as others have noted, we keep both forms and differentiate between them - as in Giordano's distinction between stock indices and stock indexes.At some point the usage of the less-favored choice moves to "rare", and eventually "archaic."