I'm not going to comment on how the incident that caused the injury is being handled by the police or the NHL. I was actually spurred to write this post because of how many times I've cringed when I heard someone official use the wrong word when describing Pacorietty's spinal injury. Every single report I heard on TV featured at least one person saying the hockey player had suffered "a fractured vertebrae."
OK, time for me to put on my grammar cop helmet! Please people, could we say "a fractured vertebra"? Please???
"Vertebrae" is the plural of "vertebra" — just like "antennae" is the plural of "antenna." It's an unusual construct in English, I know. But in Latin, some plurals end in -ae, and some of those words have been borrowed into our language. It's one of those things we have to learn to do correctly, if we want to improve our use of English.
The good news is that all the text I found relating to the hockey injury correctly used the singular form "a fractured vertebra." And I'm willing to bet that all those news anchors and sportscasters saw "vertebra" on their prompters too. With so many folks getting the word wrong, perhaps some got confused and others just decided it was safer to go along with the crowd.
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