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arctanthrope@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Pedantry gone too far!

  Mitochondria would be grammatically correct because there are multiple mitochondrion in the cell. Referring to only one of them would be inaccurate.

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  • wander1236@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Then it’s the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell

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    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Unless “the mitochondria” is a singular group noun, like in “The Village People is a band”, or “This [set of] data was collected…”

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      • Mac@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I, too, love pulling this trick out. :p

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      • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        But then again British English would still use the plural form so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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• lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  That makes it sound like each cell has one mitochondrion and each mitochondrion equates to one powerhouse while in fact, all mitochondria of a cell collectively are the powerhouse of the cell

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  • arctanthrope@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    not necessarily. for example we say things like “the lion is the king of the jungle,” but that doesn’t mean there’s only one lion per jungle. sometimes we refer to an archetypal singular to convey something about every member of a group

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    • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And sometimes we use the etymological plural of a loan word for the singular or mass noun. Like spaghetti (Italian plural of spaghetto), visa (visum), salami (salame), broccoli (broccolo), mitochondria, …

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• Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell

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• KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s kinda like like the plural form has also become a colloquial singular form

  Same with “a bacteria”

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• absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Well…a single mitocondrion is not really a powerhouse of anything except really simple single celled organisms.

  Wikipedia:

  The number of mitochondria in a cell vary widely by organism, tissue, and cell type. A mature red blood cell has no mitochondria, whereas a liver cell can have more than 2000.

  It would be more correct to say “are the powerhouse of the cell”.

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