Other foreign terms have become so thoroughly Anglicised as to adopt English plurals, and it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the English or the original foreign form is the more correct. None but a pedant would speak of ‘thechori of an opera,’ ‘thecroci in a garden,’ or ‘thedogmata of the church;’[…]]
1981,William Irwin Thompson,The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page128:
Nothing is more short-lived than the erection; like thecrocus of spring, it is there for a moment, and then it is gone; one moment the penis is small, soft, and insignificant, and then in the next it is hard, rigid, and three and four times its previous size.
Most often, the masculinecrocus was used to refer to the plant, while the neutercrocum was used for saffron gathered from the plant. However, this distinction is not universally observed, and the wordcrocus may refer either to the crocus plant or to saffron taken from the plant.
"crocus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’sGlossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
“crocus”, inHarry Thurston Peck, editor (1898),Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
“crocus”, inWilliam Smith, editor (1848),A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
