Computers becoming a thing, and the information they process being referred to as “data”, has had the interesting side effect of making people treat the word “data” as singular.
It's actually plural. The singular form is “datum”. (Or at least it used to be. Language is defined by consensus, after all.)
Fun fact: the same thing happened to the word “you”, centuries ago. According to Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you#Usage_notes it was originally the plural form of “thee”.
#English #language
argv[-1]
npub1a9…4ca38
2025-12-18 00:14:01 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1a972l2p20hg5fwewcyyf404pry97gxf5d6gxha5lp0py8uq4sm7qq4ca38Seen on
wss://relay.ditto.pubPublished at
2025-12-18 00:14:01 UTCEvent JSON
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"pubkey": "e97cafa82a7dd144bb2ec1089abea1190be419346e906bf69f0bc243f01586fc",
"created_at": 1766016841,
"kind": 1,
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"content": "Computers becoming a thing, and the information they process being referred to as “data”, has had the interesting side effect of making people treat the word “data” as singular.\n\nIt's actually plural. The singular form is “datum”. (Or at least it used to be. Language is defined by consensus, after all.)\n\nFun fact: the same thing happened to the word “you”, centuries ago. According to Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you#Usage_notes it was originally the plural form of “thee”.\n\n#English #language",
"sig": "c4c0c94baed06f100441261400570b676fa9003a43fe39efd40e0045147020d23a530f750169b6005afd174b93723f65bbc68f6b7a0783c0fd84629f026d5c75"
}