Pluralis Absurditatis


The term Pluralis Absurditatis is a joke, hence it is listed here in the humour section, but as always, jokes are a way to handle strange realities of life. The speleology is a describing science, and over the centuries many names were found for things and later replaced by other names. Some names were good, others were bad. But an annoying principle of misnaming caves is what we dubbed Pluralis Absurditatis, the absurd tendency to call a cave caves. It is based on a simple principle:

In one definition of the term "cave", which was commonly used in the 18th and 19th century, a cave is an underground space or chamber. Following the logic, that a passage is a succession of such chambers, it is called caves, in the plural. A shallow cave is a grotto, a long cave is grottoes.