On Saturday, 16 January 2016 22:26:05 UTC, wrote:
In message
Nick Gardner wrote:

On 16/01/2016 09:12, Graham Easterling wrote:
OK I'm in Penzance but since 1992 I have recorded 523 lower maximums
(maxima?) To put it another way over the last 24 years 1 day in 27 has
been colder!
January 1997 saw 6 days fail to reach 2C.

Maximums is 'correct'. The English language is not owned and if enough
people use it then it eventually becomes the accepted
version/spelling/grammar.

Maxima is for the language snobs.

And while we're here, why do some people say 'stadia' instead of
stadiums? I thought a stadia was an ancient unit of measurement?

It's Latin Nick. Since "um" is the ending of a neuter latin word, and
"ia" its plural. But if we are going to do that, we probably need to
take into account the other latin cases. So we might talk about
"Stadiorum seating" for example. Or we should use latin plurals for
other latin derived words so the plural of "bus" should be "bi". It's
simpler to stick with the English I think.

--
Visit my weather station at
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/Cumulus/index.htm

Believing is the start of everything to come. - Hayley Westenra

Everything in that post is a misapprehension of Latin and is wrong.

Tudor Hughes