The word “virii” defines a category of software that consists of viruses, worms and trojans. The general usage of the word is to describe a collection of software. Virii is a new English language word.
The word originated with the computer cracker culture, and due to its origins it is unpopular with some people. The reasons for this can be guessed at: the cracker culture can be both mischievous and destructive, and acknowledging their new word might send the wrong message.
A small but vocal group of people has taken up the torch to try to eliminate the word virii from the English language. Their motivation is to fight the cracker culture in a legitimate forum.
One of the best known articles against the word virii is “The definitive treatise on the plural of “Virus”” which centers around the single argument that virii isn’t the plural of virus. Unfortunately the author of this “treatise” didn’t investigate virii enough to understand that the word doesn’t and never did refer to the plural of virus. The paper destroys a straw man: that virii is meant to be the plural of virus.
Recently another new word has entered the English language that also describes a class of computer software very similar to virii. That word is “malware“. Malware and virii are not the same though, malware is software that has bad intent. Virii can be software the does nothing more than replicate itself, with no ill side effects.
The fact that the same people that took up the torch against virii aren’t doing anything about malware shows that their intentions were not honorable. While they picked a legitimate forum to battle the cracker culture, their methods and arguments were not. One can only hope that they will re-direct their energies to something more useful.
This “thesis and dissertation” is actually an editorial on the word virii.