English plural
Encyclopedia
lang=en
In the English language
, noun
s are inflected
for grammatical number
—that is, singular
or plural
. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns. For the plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns
.
Phonetic transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation
and General American
.
in English is suffixed
to the end of most nouns. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form:
Where a singular noun ends in a sibilant sound —/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/— the plural is formed by adding /ɨz/. The spelling adds -es, or -s if the singular already ends in -e:
When the singular form ends in a voiceless
consonant
(other than a sibilant) —/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ or /θ/— the plural is formed by adding /s/. The spelling adds -s. Examples:
For all other words (i.e. words ending in vowels or voiced non-sibilants) the regular plural adds /z/, represented orthographically
by -s:
Morphophonetically, these rules are sufficient to describe most English plurals. However, there are several complications introduced in spelling.
The -oes rule: most nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant
also form their plurals by adding -es :
The -ies rule: nouns ending in a y preceded by a consonant usually drop the y and add -ies . This is taught to many North American and British students with the mnemonic: "Change the y to i and add es":
However, proper nouns (particularly those for people or places) ending in a y preceded by a consonant form their plurals regularly:
The rule does not apply to words that are merely capitalized common nouns:
Other exceptions include lay-bys and stand-bys.
Words ending in a y preceded by a vowel form their plurals regularly:
(Money/Monies is an exception, but money can also form its plural regularly.)
loanwords, are exceptions to the -oes rule:
In Old and Middle English voiceless fricative
s /f/, /θ/ mutated to voiced fricatives before a voiced ending. In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of /f/ changing to /v/, the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent e is added in this case if the singular does not already end with -e:
In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:
Many nouns ending in /f/ or /θ/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:
Some can do either:
The Toronto Maple Leafs
ice hockey
team is a special case. (See the collective nouns section below.)
In a Canadian accent
, the mutation to a voiced consonant produces a change in the sound of the preceding diphthong (/aʊ/ or /aɪ/).
For dwarf, the common form of the plural was dwarfs —as, for example, in Walt Disney
's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
— until J. R. R. Tolkien
popularized dwarves; he intended the changed spelling to differentiate the "dwarf" fantasy race in his novels from the cuter and simpler beings common in fairy tales, but his usage has since spread. Multiple astronomical dwarf star
s and multiple nonmythological short human beings
, however, remain dwarfs.
For staff (/stæf/ or /stɑːf/) in the sense of "a body of employees", the plural is always staff; otherwise, both staffs and staves (/steɪvz/) are acceptable, except in compounds; such as flagstaffs. Staves is rare in North America except in the sense of "magic rod", or the musical notation tool
; stave of a barrel or cask is a back-formation
from staves, which is its plural. (See the Plural to singular by back-formation section below.)
The plural deers is listed in some dictionaries. As a general rule, game or other animals are often referred to in the singular for the plural in a sporting context: "He shot six brace of pheasant", "Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year", whereas in another context such as zoology or tourism the regular plural would be used. Similarly, nearly all kinds of fish have no separate plural form (though there are exceptions -- such as rays, sharks or lampreys). And the word "fish" itself is also troublesome, being generally used as a plural when in the context of food, but forming a regular plural otherwise (thus "three lots of fish and chips", "the industry landed 5,200 tonnes of fish in 1998" but "the order
of fishes", "the miracle
of the loaves and fishes", the phrase "sleep with the fishes"). The usage does vary, however, so that for example the phrase "five fish in an aquarium" might to another native user be "five fishes in an aquarium". Using the plural form fish could imply many individual fish(es) of the same species while fishes could imply many individual fish(es) of differing species.
Other nouns that have identical singular and plural forms include:
Referring to individual songs in the blues
musical style: "play me a blues"; "he sang three blues and a calypso"
Referring, in the plural, to animals in a herd: "fifty head of cattle"
As a unit of weight equal to 14 pounds
The word box, referring to a computer, is pluralized semi-humorously to boxen in the Leet
dialect. Multiple VAX
computers, likewise, are sometimes called Vaxen particularly if operating as a cluster, but multiple Unix systems are usually Unices along the Latin model.
The word sistren, referring to Christian sisters [modeled on brethren], is also semi-humorously pluralized.
(these are sometimes called mutated plurals):
This group consists of words that historically belong to the Old English consonantal declension, see Germanic umlaut#I-mutation in Old English.
Mouse is sometimes pluralized mouses in discussions of the computer mouse; however, mice is just as common.
Mongoose has the plural mongooses, or less commonly mongeese by analogy to geese.
and Classical Greek
. The general trend with loanwords is toward what is called Anglicization or naturalization, that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns (particularly ones from Latin) have retained their original plurals for some time after they are introduced. Other nouns have become Anglicized, taking on the normal "s" ending. In some cases, both forms are still competing.
The choice of a form can often depend on context: for a linguist, the plural of appendix
is appendices (following the original language); for physicians, however, the plural of appendix is appendixes. Likewise, a radio
or radar
engineer
works with antennas, but an entomologist deals with antennae. The choice of form can also depend on the level of discourse: traditional Latin plurals are found more often in academic and scientific contexts, whereas in daily speech the Anglicized forms are more common. In the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicized forms when these are more common.
Some people treat process as if it belonged to this class, pronouncing processes /ˈprɒsɨsiːz/ instead of standard /ˈprɒsɛsɨz/. Since the word comes from Latin processus, whose plural in the fourth declension is processūs with a long u, this pronunciation is by analogy, not etymology.
Axes, the plural of axis, is pronounced differently from axes (/ˈæksɨz/), the plural of ax(e).
Colloquial usages based in a humorous fashion on the second declension include Elvii to refer to multiple Elvis impersonators and Loti, used by petrolheads to refer to Lotus
automobiles in the plural.
Foreign terms may take native plural forms, especially when the user is addressing an audience familiar with the language. In such cases, the conventionally formed English plural may sound awkward or be confusing.
Ot is pronounced os (with unvoiced s) in the Ashkenazi dialect.
Other nouns such as kimonos, ninjas, futons, and tsunamis are more often seen with a regular English plural. However, there are nouns such as "mawashi" that are seen with an irregular plural: mawashia.
When referring to the bird, kiwi may or may not take an -s; when used as an informal term for a New Zealander, it always takes an -s.
Māori, when referring to a person of that ethnicity, does not usually take an -s. Many speakers avoid the use of Māori as a noun, and instead use it only as an adjective.
has produced a regularized plural.
An agenda commonly is used to mean a list of agendum.
A single piece of data is sometimes referred to as a data point. In engineering, drafting, surveying, and geodesy, and in weight and balance calculations for aircraft, a datum
(plural datums or data) is a reference point, surface, or axis on an object or the earth’s surface against which measurements are made.
Some plural nouns are used as such —invariably being accompanied by a plural verb form— while their singular forms are rarely encountered:
In medical terminology, a phalanx is any bone of the finger or toe. A military phalanx is pluralized phalanxes.
A related phenomenon is the confusion of a foreign plural for its singular form:
Magazine was derived from Arabic via French. It was originally plural, but in French and English, it is always regarded as singular.
Plurals of numbers differ according to how they are used. The following rules apply to dozen, score, hundred, thousand, million, and similar terms:
A sagan of any kind of items is at least four billion, as in billions and billions. Hence, "about a sagan of micrometeorites."
but very rarely in American English
: a careers advisor, a languages expert. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: women killers are women who kill, whereas woman killers are those who kill women.
(see also Words better known in the plural above):
Some of these do have singular adjective forms, such as billiard ball. In addition, some are treated as singular in certain sentences, e.g., "billiards is a game played on a table with billiard balls and a cue", "measles is an infectious disease". Thanks is usually treated as a plural. Although "cow" is sometimes used in colloquial English for cattle, the term is age and gender specific.
A particular set of nouns, describing things having two parts, comprises the major group of pluralia tantum in modern English:
These words are interchangeable with a pair of scissors, a pair of trousers, and so forth. In the American fashion industry it is common to refer to a single pair of pants as a pant —though this is a back-formation
, the English word (deriving from the French pantalon) was originally singular. In the same field, one half of a pair of scissors separated from the other half is, rather illogically, referred to as a half-scissor. Tweezers used to be part of this group, but tweezer has come into common usage only since the second half of the twentieth century.
Mass noun
s (or uncountable nouns) do not represent distinct objects, so the singular and plural semantics do not apply in the same way. Some examples:
Referring to the musical style as a whole.
Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. For example, when I have two grain(s) of sand, I do not have two sands; I have sand. There is more sand in your pile than in mine, not more sands. However, there could be the many "sands of Africa" — either many distinct stretches of sand, or distinct types of sand of interest to geologist
s or builders, or simply the allusive The Sands of Mars
.
It is rare to pluralize furniture in this way. Nor is information ever pluralized.
There is only one class of atoms called oxygen, but there are several isotopes of oxygen, which might be referred to as different oxygens. In casual speech, oxygen might be used as shorthand for "oxygen atoms", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so it is entirely sensible to refer to multiple oxygens in the same molecule.
One would interpret Bob's wisdoms as various pieces of Bob's wisdom (that is, don't run with scissors, defer to those with greater knowledge), deceits as a series of instances of deceitful behavior (lied on income tax, dated my wife), and the different idlenesses of the worker as plural distinct manifestations of the mass concept of idleness (or as different types of idleness, "bone lazy" versus "no work to do").
Specie versus species make a fascinating case. Both words come from a Latin word meaning "kind", but they do not form a singular-plural pair. In Latin, specie is the ablative singular form, while species is the nominative form, which happens to be the same in both singular and plural. In English, species behaves similarly —as a noun with identical singular and plural— while specie is treated as a mass noun, referring to money in the form of coins (the idea is of "[payment] in kind").
nouns have one basic term, or head
, with which they end, and are pluralized in typical fashion:
A compound that has one head, with which it begins, usually pluralizes its head:
It is common in informal speech to instead pluralize the last word in the manner typical of most English nouns, but in edited prose, the forms given above are preferred.
If a compound can be thought to have two heads, both of them tend to be pluralized when the first head has an irregular plural form:
Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head:
In military usage, the term general, as part of an officer's title, is etymologically an adjective, but it has been adopted as a noun and thus a head, so compound titles employing it are pluralized at the end:
For compounds of three or more words that have a head (or a term functioning as a head) with an irregular plural form, only that term is pluralized:
For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front —especially in cases where the compound is ad hoc and/or the head is metaphorical— it is generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last (if open when singular, such compounds tend to take hyphens when plural in the latter case):
With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g., heads of state):
With extended compounds constructed around o, only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural):
directly from the French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. French-loaned compounds with a head at the beginning tend to pluralize both words, according to French practice:
For compounds adopted directly from the French where the head comes at the end, it is generally regarded as acceptable either to pluralize both words or only the last:
If the adjectives beau "beautiful/handsome", nouveau "new", or vieux "old" precede a masculine singular noun beginning with a vowel or a mute "h", they are changed to bel, nouvel, and vieil to help ease the pronunciation. The normal plural rule applies to plural nouns.
French-loaned compounds longer than two words tend to follow the rules of the original language, which usually involves pluralizing only the head at the beginning:
but:
A distinctive case is the compound film noir. For this French-loaned artistic term, English-language texts variously use as the plural films noirs, films noir, and, most prevalently, film noirs. The 11th edition of the standard Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2006) lists film noirs as the preferred style. Three primary bases may be identified for this:
See also the headless nouns section below.
, linguist
Steven Pinker
discusses what he calls "headless words", typically bahuvrihi
compounds, like lowlife and Red Sox
, in which life and sox are not heads
semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, nor are Red Sox a group of similarly colored socks. When the common form of such a word is singular, it is treated as if it has a regular plural, even if the final constituent of the word is usually pluralized in a nonregular fashion. Thus, more than one lowlife are lowlifes, not "lowlives", according to Pinker. A related process can be observed with the compound maple leaf, pluralized in its common-noun form as maple leaves; when it is adopted as the name of an ice-hockey team, its plural becomes Maple Leafs
. Other proposed examples include:
An exception is Blackfoot
, of which the plural can be Blackfeet, though that form of the name is officially rejected by the Blackfoot First Nations
of Canada.
Where words have taken on completely new meanings, irregular plurals may become regularized. Antennas is the accepted plural of antenna when it refers to electromagnetic equipment
, in contrast to antennae
for arthropod
s' and insect
s' feelers. The computer mouse
is sometimes considered headless and pluralized as mouses, but also often as mice; in contrast to the compound headless words just discussed, there is a considerably stronger metaphor
ical relationship in this case, with many computer pointing devices resembling rodents with tails.
In other cases, the common form of a headless word is a nonregular plural; when such a word lacks a terminal s, it is treated as defective, thus making the singular version of the word identical: an individual member of the Boston baseball team is a Red Sox, just as all twenty-five are. One Chicago White Sox
is a White Sox (questionable).
, Knicks
, and Canadiens
, and straightforward compound names such as Blue Jays
— form a particular set of collective nouns. Closely related to the class of essentially plural headless nouns typified by Red Sox are the growing number of orthographically singular sports team names that may be classified as examples of a special type of collective noun — one that (a) has identical terms for both the collective and an individual thereof (as with the essentially plural headless noun) but (b) is not used as a counting noun beyond the singular. Two examples include the name of the NBA team of Miami, Florida
— the Miami Heat
— and the name of the Colorado NHL team —the Colorado Avalanche
. While heat is a mass noun, whereas avalanche is a normal counting noun, in the context of a team name, both words operate as this special type of collective noun. Just as with the Red Sox or the White Sox, any one of the twelve current members of Miami's pro basketball squad is a Heat (questionable). Similarly, any individual member of the Colorado Avalanche is an Avalanche. However, where one may say something like "two Red Sox struck out" or "four White Sox doubled consequitively", the equivalent term is invariably used as an adjective when referring to multiple players of one of the teams named in this increasingly popular way: "two Heat players fought" or "four Avalanche players scored" (The followers of the Avalanche have a little more flexibility available to them, with "Avs" as the team's unofficial, but widely used nickname). Other examples include:
In not every case above is it certain that the name is ever used in its noun form to refer to anything but the collective — i.e., not even to an individual player. In other cases, it is possible that the name is sometimes used in its noun form (with or without a terminal s appended) to refer to multiple players, short of the whole collective. Note that in the above list, there is a case of an irregular plural in the "Minnesota Lynx", since the plural of "lynx" is "lynx". For example, "The scout spotted 20 lynx living in the neighborhood of the Great Bear Lake
."
An exceptional case is that of the St. Louis Blues ice hockey
team. The club is named after the song the "St. Louis Blues", which makes the team name Blues an irregularly pluralized word to begin with —one whose plural is identical to its singular. By this reckoning, then, an individual team member would also be a "Blues". However, because the name is spelled like a regular plural, its use as a collective noun leads to a process of back-formation
, with the result that a single player on the team is known as a "Blue". This team's name's distinctive orthographical nature further allows it to be used freely as a counting noun, so that one may speak of, for instance, "two Blues in the penalty box".
Pinker discussed a case that could be construed as opposite, that of the Florida Marlins
baseball team. Describing how the issue was raised by the talk show
host David Letterman
, Pinker asked, Why is the name the Marlins "given that those fish are referred to in the plural as marlin?" An analogous question could be asked about the Maple Leafs. Pinker's answer comes down to this: "A name is not the same thing as a noun." Consequently, names (and nouns that derive from names) based on nouns with irregular plurals do not acquire them — though, as we see with Red Sox, new irregularities may arise.
Brethren was used exclusively earlier, but over time, it has been replaced by brothers. Brethren is still used in some contexts such as the brethren of a monastic order.
Childer has all but disappeared, but can still be seen in Childermas (Innocents' Day).
Clothes formerly referred collectively to all of a household's washable cloth articles, but clothes is now used almost exclusively for the garments of people and doll
s.
Kine is still used in some rural English dialects.
Dies is used as the plural for die in the sense of a mold; dice
as the plural (and increasingly as the singular) in the sense of a small random number generator. Dice is also the accepted plural form of die in the semiconductor industry. On gambling and games, we may roll one die or toss two or three dice.
Fish: the plural for one species of fish, or caught fish, is fish, but for the plural of fish of multiple individuals or species fishes is used. Fishes is also a word with a Biblical connotation.
For multiple plants, iris is used, but irises is used for multiple blossoms.
If one has several (British) one-penny pieces, one has several pennies. Pence is used for an amount of money, which can be made up of a number of coins of different denominations: one penny and one five-penny piece are together worth six pence. The suffixed minor currency unit of "p" (/pi/) is often vocalised, where such small divisions of currency are discussed in common speech, and used for both the singular and the "amount plural", but "number plurals" build upon the base values and any omission of the unit shifts the plural to the coin's numerator (e.g. "I have a one /pi/ and three twenty /piz/ and two fifties in my pocket. I cannot believe that I only have one pound
, sixty-one /pi/ left after last night."). In written speech, a number of coins might be "two 10ps", although those that prefer to use apostrophes for initialisms might decide to use the variant of "two 10p's".
Penny and pennies also refer to one or more American or Canadian one-cent pieces, though in American and Canadian usage, a nickel is worth five cents, not five pence. Also, a dime
is worth ten cents, not pence, and a quarter (dollar) is worth twenty-five cents, not pence.
The word people is usually treated as the suppletive
plural of person (one person, many people). However, in legal and other formal contexts, the plural of person is persons; furthermore, people can also be a singular noun with its own plural (for example, "We are many persons, from many peoples").
Opinion is divided on whether to extend this use of the apostrophe to related but nonambiguous cases, such as the plurals of numerals (e.g., 1990's vs. 1990s) and words used as terms (e.g., "his writing uses a lot of but's" vs. "his writing uses a lot of buts"). Some writers favor the use of the apostrophe as consistent with its application in ambiguous cases; others say it confuses the plural with the possessive
-'s and should be avoided whenever possible in pluralization, a view with which The Chicago Manual of Style concurs.
English and many other European languages form the plural of a one-letter abbreviation by doubling it: p. ("page"), pp. ("pages"); l. ("line"), ll. ("lines"). These abbreviations are used in literary work, such as footnotes and bibliographies.
Acronyms are initialisms that are used and pronounced as if they were words. For example, we have AMTRAK, HAL, LEM, NASA, and NATO. These contrast with the different variety that are read aloud one letter at a time: {C.I.A., C.S.M., D.O.D., E.U., G.C.M., G.P.S., I.B.M., N.A.C.A., N.S.A., R.C.A., R.P.M., S.S.T., T.W.A., U.S.S.R., W.P.A., etc.}
The most consistent approach for pluralizing pronounceable acronyms is to simply add a lowercase "s" as its suffix. This works even for acronyms ending with an s, such as with CASs , while still making it possible to use the possessive form ("'s") for the acronyms without confusion. (One sometimes sees "-es" added, which also works acceptably: "OSes.") The old, old style of pluralizing single letters with "'s" was naturally extended to acronyms when they were all commonly written with periods. This form is still preferred by some people for all initialisms and thus "'s" as a suffix is often seen in informal usage.
. For example, pease (modern peas) was in origin a singular with plural peasen. However, pease came to be analysed as plural by analogy, from which a new singular pea was formed; the spelling of pease was also altered accordingly, surviving only in the name of the dish pease porridge or pease pudding. Similarly, termites was the three-syllable plural of termes; this singular was lost, however, and the plural form reduced to two syllables. Syringe is a back-formation from syringes, itself the plural of syrinx
, a musical instrument. Cherry is from Norman French
cherise. Phases was once the plural of phasis, but the singular is now phase.
Kudos is a singular Greek word meaning praise, but is often taken to be a plural. At present, however, kudo is considered an error, though the usage is becoming more common as kudos becomes better known. The name of the Greek sandwich style gyros is increasingly undergoing a similar transformation.
The term, from Latin, for the main upper arm flexor in the singular is the biceps muscle (from biceps brachii); however, many English speakers take it to be a plural and refer to the muscle of only one arm, by back-formation, as a bicep. The correct —although very seldom used— Latin plural would be bicipites.
The word sastrugi (hard ridges on deep snow) is of Russian origin and its singular is sastruga; but the imaginary Latin-type singular sastrugus has sometimes been used.
, Brussels
, Chartres
, Dallas, Kansas, Naples, New Orleans, the Netherlands
, Paris
(France or Texas), the Philippines
, Santos
, Texas
, the River Thames
, the United States
, and Wales
. For example, "The United States is a country in North America
."
In discussing peoples whose demonym
takes -man or -woman, there are three options: pluralize to -men or -women if referring to individuals, and use the root alone if referring to the whole nation, or add people.
One can say "a Scots(wo)man" or "a Scot", "Scots(wo)men", "Scottish people", or "Scots", and "the Scottish" or "the Scots". (Scotch is considered old fashioned.)
Several peoples have names that are simple nouns and can be pluralized by the addition of either -s or -ish (the later case often calls for the elimination of terminal letters so the pluralizing suffix can be connected directly with the last consonant of the root):
Names of peoples that end in -ese take no plural:
Other names of peoples that have no plural form include Swiss and Québécois, although the latter is sometimes interchangeable with Quebec(k)er, which pluralizes as Quebec(k)ers.
Most names for Native Americans are not pluralized:
Some exceptions include Algonquins, Apaches, Aztecs, Black Hawks, Chippewas, Hurons, Incas, Mayans, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Seminoles. Note also the following words borrowed from Inuktitut
:
Names of most other peoples of the world are pluralized using the normal English rules.
they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree." Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England
are playing Germany
tonight refers to a football
game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country. In North American English
, such words are invariably treated as singular.
refers to these as "snob plurals" and conjectures that they may have developed by analogy with the common English irregular plural animal words "deer", "sheep" and "trout".
In the English language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s are inflected
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
for grammatical number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
—that is, singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
or plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns. For the plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns
English personal pronouns
The personal pronouns in the English language can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little noun or adjective inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns...
.
Phonetic transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
and General American
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
.
Regular plurals
The plural morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
in English is suffixed
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
to the end of most nouns. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form:
Where a singular noun ends in a sibilant sound —/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/— the plural is formed by adding /ɨz/. The spelling adds -es, or -s if the singular already ends in -e:
| kiss | kisses | /ˈkɪsɨz/ |
| phase | phases | /ˈfeɪzɨz/ |
| dish | dishes | /ˈdɪʃɨz/ |
| massage | massages | /məˈsɑːʒɨz/ or /ˈmæsɑːʒɨz/ |
| witch | witches | /ˈwɪtʃɨz/ |
| judge | judges | /ˈdʒʌdʒɨz/ |
When the singular form ends in a voiceless
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
(other than a sibilant) —/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ or /θ/— the plural is formed by adding /s/. The spelling adds -s. Examples:
| lap | laps | /læps/ |
| cat | cats | /kæts/ |
| clock | clocks | /klɒks/ |
| cuff | cuffs | /kʌfs/ |
| death | deaths | /dɛθs/ |
For all other words (i.e. words ending in vowels or voiced non-sibilants) the regular plural adds /z/, represented orthographically
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
by -s:
| boy | boys | /bɔɪz/ |
| girl | girls | /ɡɜrlz/ |
| chair | chairs | /tʃɛərz/ |
Morphophonetically, these rules are sufficient to describe most English plurals. However, there are several complications introduced in spelling.
The -oes rule: most nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
also form their plurals by adding -es :
| hero | heroes |
| potato | potatoes |
| volcano | volcanoes or volcanos |
The -ies rule: nouns ending in a y preceded by a consonant usually drop the y and add -ies . This is taught to many North American and British students with the mnemonic: "Change the y to i and add es":
| cherry | cherries |
| lady | ladies |
However, proper nouns (particularly those for people or places) ending in a y preceded by a consonant form their plurals regularly:
| Germany | Germanys (as in The two Germanys were unified in 1990; this rule is commonly not adhered to as several book titles show; Sicilies Kingdom of the Two Sicilies The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification... and Scillies Isles of Scilly The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain. The islands have had a unitary authority council since 1890, and are separate from the Cornwall unitary authority, but some services are combined with Cornwall and the islands are still part... , rather than Sicilys and Scillys, are the standard plurals of Sicily Sicily Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,... and Scilly.) |
| Harry | Harrys (as in There are three Harrys in our office) |
The rule does not apply to words that are merely capitalized common nouns:
| P&O Ferries (from ferry) |
Other exceptions include lay-bys and stand-bys.
Words ending in a y preceded by a vowel form their plurals regularly:
| day | days |
| monkey | monkeys |
(Money/Monies is an exception, but money can also form its plural regularly.)
Almost-regular plurals
Many nouns of foreign origin, including almost all ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
loanwords, are exceptions to the -oes rule:
| canto | cantos |
| homo | homos |
| photo | photos |
| zero | zeros |
| piano | pianos |
| portico | porticos |
| pro | pros |
| quarto (paper size) | quartos |
| kimono | kimonos |
In Old and Middle English voiceless fricative
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
s /f/, /θ/ mutated to voiced fricatives before a voiced ending. In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of /f/ changing to /v/, the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent e is added in this case if the singular does not already end with -e:
| bath | baths | /bɑːðz/, /bæðz/ |
| mouth | mouths | /maʊðz/ |
| calf | calves | /kɑːvz/, /kævz/ |
| leaf | leaves (see footnote), /liːvz/ | |
| knife | knives | /naɪvz/ |
| life | lives |
In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:
| house | houses | /haʊzɨz/ |
Many nouns ending in /f/ or /θ/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:
| moth | moths (voiced /mɒðz/ is rare but does occur in New England New England New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut... and Canada) |
| proof | proofs |
Some can do either:
| dwarf | dwarfs/dwarves |
| hoof | hoofs/hooves |
| roof | roofs (commonly voiced as /ruːvz/ to rhyme with hooves, but rooves is a rare archaic spelling) |
| staff | staffs/staves |
| turf | turfs/turves (latter rare) |
The Toronto Maple Leafs
Toronto Maple Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They are members of the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...
ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...
team is a special case. (See the collective nouns section below.)
In a Canadian accent
Canadian raising
Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which certain diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants...
, the mutation to a voiced consonant produces a change in the sound of the preceding diphthong (/aʊ/ or /aɪ/).
For dwarf, the common form of the plural was dwarfs —as, for example, in Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
— until J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
popularized dwarves; he intended the changed spelling to differentiate the "dwarf" fantasy race in his novels from the cuter and simpler beings common in fairy tales, but his usage has since spread. Multiple astronomical dwarf star
Dwarf star
The term dwarf star refers to a variety of distinct classes of stars.* Dwarf star alone generally refers to any main sequence star, a star of luminosity class V.** Red dwarfs are low-mass main sequence stars....
s and multiple nonmythological short human beings
Dwarfism
Dwarfism is short stature resulting from a medical condition. It is sometimes defined as an adult height of less than 4 feet 10 inches , although this definition is problematic because short stature in itself is not a disorder....
, however, remain dwarfs.
For staff (/stæf/ or /stɑːf/) in the sense of "a body of employees", the plural is always staff; otherwise, both staffs and staves (/steɪvz/) are acceptable, except in compounds; such as flagstaffs. Staves is rare in North America except in the sense of "magic rod", or the musical notation tool
Staff (music)
In standard Western musical notation, the staff, or stave, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch—or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending upon the intended effect,...
; stave of a barrel or cask is a back-formation
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
from staves, which is its plural. (See the Plural to singular by back-formation section below.)
Irregular plurals
There are many other less regular ways of forming plurals, usually stemming from older forms of English or from foreign borrowings.Nouns with identical singular and plural
Some nouns spell their singular and plural exactly alike; some linguists regard these as regular plurals. Many of these are the names of animals:- deer
- moose
- sheep
- bison
- salmon
- pike
- trout
- fish
- swine
The plural deers is listed in some dictionaries. As a general rule, game or other animals are often referred to in the singular for the plural in a sporting context: "He shot six brace of pheasant", "Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year", whereas in another context such as zoology or tourism the regular plural would be used. Similarly, nearly all kinds of fish have no separate plural form (though there are exceptions -- such as rays, sharks or lampreys). And the word "fish" itself is also troublesome, being generally used as a plural when in the context of food, but forming a regular plural otherwise (thus "three lots of fish and chips", "the industry landed 5,200 tonnes of fish in 1998" but "the order
Order (biology)
In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...
of fishes", "the miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
of the loaves and fishes", the phrase "sleep with the fishes"). The usage does vary, however, so that for example the phrase "five fish in an aquarium" might to another native user be "five fishes in an aquarium". Using the plural form fish could imply many individual fish(es) of the same species while fishes could imply many individual fish(es) of differing species.
Other nouns that have identical singular and plural forms include:
- aircraftAircraftAn aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
; watercraftWatercraftA watercraft is a vessel or craft designed to move across or through water. The name is derived from the term "craft" which was used to describe all types of water going vessels...
; spacecraftSpacecraftA spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
; hovercraftHovercraftA hovercraft is a craft capable of traveling over surfaces while supported by a cushion of slow moving, high-pressure air which is ejected against the surface below and contained within a "skirt." Although supported by air, a hovercraft is not considered an aircraft.Hovercraft are used throughout...
; ocean-going craft - informationInformationInformation in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
(always used with singular verbs) - the blues
- cannon (sometimes cannons)
- head
- stone (occasionally stones)
Referring to individual songs in the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
musical style: "play me a blues"; "he sang three blues and a calypso"
Referring, in the plural, to animals in a herd: "fifty head of cattle"
As a unit of weight equal to 14 pounds
Irregular -(e)n plurals
The plural of a few nouns can also be formed from the singular by adding -n or -en, stemming from the Old English weak declension:| ox | oxen | (particularly when referring to a team of draft animals, sometimes oxes in nonstandard American English American English American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States.... ) |
| child | children | (actually earlier plural "cildra/cildru" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural) |
| brother | brethren | (archaic plural of brother; earlier "brether" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural. Now used in fraternal orders.) |
| cow | kine | (archaic/regional; actually earlier plural "kye" [cf. Scots "kye" - "cows"] plus -en suffix, forming a double plural Double plural A double plural is a plural form to which an extra suffix has been added, mainly because the original plural suffix had become improductive and therefore irregular. So the form as a whole was no longer seen as a plural .Examples of this can be seen in the history of English and Dutch... ) |
| eye | eyen | (rare, found in some regional dialects) |
| shoe | shoon | (rare/dialectal) |
| house | housen | (rare/dialectal, used by Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature... in Puck of Pook's Hill Puck of Pook's Hill Puck of Pook's Hill is a historical fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people... ) |
| hose | hosen | (rare/archaic, used in King James Version of the Bible) |
The word box, referring to a computer, is pluralized semi-humorously to boxen in the Leet
Leet
Leet , also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters...
dialect. Multiple VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
computers, likewise, are sometimes called Vaxen particularly if operating as a cluster, but multiple Unix systems are usually Unices along the Latin model.
The word sistren, referring to Christian sisters [modeled on brethren], is also semi-humorously pluralized.
Ablaut plurals
The plural is sometimes formed by simply changing the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called ablautIndo-European ablaut
In linguistics, ablaut is a system of apophony in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages...
(these are sometimes called mutated plurals):
| foot | feet |
| goose | geese |
| louse | lice |
| man | men |
| mouse | mice |
| tooth | teeth |
| woman | women |
This group consists of words that historically belong to the Old English consonantal declension, see Germanic umlaut#I-mutation in Old English.
Mouse is sometimes pluralized mouses in discussions of the computer mouse; however, mice is just as common.
Mongoose has the plural mongooses, or less commonly mongeese by analogy to geese.
Irregular plurals from Latin and Greek
English has borrowed a great many words from LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Classical Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. The general trend with loanwords is toward what is called Anglicization or naturalization, that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns (particularly ones from Latin) have retained their original plurals for some time after they are introduced. Other nouns have become Anglicized, taking on the normal "s" ending. In some cases, both forms are still competing.
The choice of a form can often depend on context: for a linguist, the plural of appendix
Appendix
Appendix may refer to:In documents:*Addendum, any addition to a document, such as a book or legal contract*Bibliography, a systematic list of books and other works...
is appendices (following the original language); for physicians, however, the plural of appendix is appendixes. Likewise, a radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
or radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
works with antennas, but an entomologist deals with antennae. The choice of form can also depend on the level of discourse: traditional Latin plurals are found more often in academic and scientific contexts, whereas in daily speech the Anglicized forms are more common. In the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicized forms when these are more common.
- Final a becomes -ae (also -æ), or just adds -s:
alumna alumnae formula formulae/formulas encyclopaedia (or encyclopædia) / encyclopedia | encyclopaedias / encyclopedias (encyclopaediae and encyclopediae are rare) - Final ex or ix becomes -ices , or just adds -es:
index indices /ˈɪndɨsiːz/ or indexes matrix matrices /ˈmeɪtrɨsiːz/ vertex vertices /ˈvɜrtɨsiːz/
Some people treat process as if it belonged to this class, pronouncing processes /ˈprɒsɨsiːz/ instead of standard /ˈprɒsɛsɨz/. Since the word comes from Latin processus, whose plural in the fourth declension is processūs with a long u, this pronunciation is by analogy, not etymology.
- Final is becomes es :
axis axes /ˈæksiːz/ crisis crises /ˈkraɪsiːz/ testis testes /ˈtɛstiːz/
Axes, the plural of axis, is pronounced differently from axes (/ˈæksɨz/), the plural of ax(e).
- Final ies remains unchanged:
series series species species - Final on becomes -a:
automaton automata criterion criteria phenomenon phenomena (more below) polyhedron polyhedra - Final um becomes -a, or just adds -s:
Final us becomes -i (second declensionaddendum addenda agendum (obsolete, not listed in most dictionaries) agenda means a "list of items of business at a meeting" and has the plural agendas datum data (Now usually treated as a singular mass noun in both informal and educated usage, but usage in scientific publications shows a strong American/British divide. American usage generally prefers to treat data as a singular in all contexts, including in serious and academic publishing. British usage now widely accepts treating data as singular in standard English, including educated everyday usage at least in non-scientific use. British scientific publishing usually still prefers treating data as a plural. Some British university style guides recommend using data for both the singular and the plural use and some recommend treating it only as a singular in connection with computers.)
In engineering, drafting, surveying, and geodesy, and in weight and balance calculations for aircraft, a datumDatumA geodetic datum is a reference from which measurements are made. In surveying and geodesy, a datum is a set of reference points on the Earth's surface against which position measurements are made, and an associated model of the shape of the earth to define a geographic coordinate system...
(plural datums or data) is a reference point, surface, or axis on an object or the Earth's surface against which measurements are made.spectrum spectra (as in power spectrum in electrical engineering Electrical engineeringElectrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...forum fora/forums medium />mediums (spiritualists, or items of medium size) corrigendum corrigenda memorandum memoranda/memorandums millennium millennia Second declensionThe second declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with similar case formation. In particular, these nouns are thematic, with an original o in most of their forms. In Classical Latin the short o of the nominative and accusative singular became u.Both Latin and Greek have two basic...
, [aɪ]) or -era or -ora (third declensionThird declensionThe third declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with broadly similar case formation — diverse stems, but similar endings. In contrast with the first- and second-declension endings, those of the third declension lack a theme vowel and so are called athematic.One distinguishing...
), or just adds -es (especially in fourth declension, where it would otherwise be the same as the singular):alumnus alumni corpus corpora census censuses focus foci genus genera prospectus prospectuses (plural prospectus is rare although technically correct) radius radii syllabus syllabi/syllabuses (in fact the Latin plural is syllabūs) viscus viscera virus viruses/virii ( see Plural form of words ending in -us#Virus )
-
cactus cactuses/cacti (in Arizona ArizonaArizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
many people avoid either choice with cactus as both singular and plural.)fungus fungi hippopotamus hippopotamuses/hippopotami octopus octopuses (note: octopi also occurs, although it is strictly speaking unfounded, because it is not a Latin noun of the second declension, but rather a Latinized form of Greek ὀκτώ-πους, eight-foot. The theoretically correct form octopodes is rarely used.) platypus platypuses (same as octopus: platypi occurs but is etymologically incorrect, and platypodes, while technically correct, is even rarer than octopodes) terminus termini/terminuses uterus uteri/uteruses
- Final us remains unchanged in the plural (fourth declension - the plural has a long ū to differentiate it from the singular short ǔ):
meatus meatus status status
Colloquial usages based in a humorous fashion on the second declension include Elvii to refer to multiple Elvis impersonators and Loti, used by petrolheads to refer to Lotus
Lotus Cars
Lotus Cars is a British manufacturer of sports and racing cars based at the former site of RAF Hethel, a World War II airfield in Norfolk. The company designs and builds race and production automobiles of light weight and fine handling characteristics...
automobiles in the plural.
- Final as in one case of a noun of Greek origin changes to -antes:
Atlas Atlantes (statues of the hero); but atlas atlases (map collections) - Final ma in nouns of Greek origin can add -ta, although -s is usually also acceptable, and in many cases more common.
stigma stigmata/stigmas stoma stomata/stomas schema schemata/schemas dogma dogmata/dogmas lemma lemmata/lemmas anathema anathemata/anathemas
Irregular plurals from other languages
- Some nouns of FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
origin add an -x, which may be silent or pronounced /z/:beau beaux or beaus bureau bureaus or bureaux château châteaux or châteaus tableau tableaux or tableaus
Foreign terms may take native plural forms, especially when the user is addressing an audience familiar with the language. In such cases, the conventionally formed English plural may sound awkward or be confusing.
- Nouns of SlavicSlavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
origin add -a or -i according to native rules, or just -s:kniazhestvo kniazhestva/kniazhestvos kobzar kobzari/kobzars oblast oblasti/oblasts
- Nouns of HebrewHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
origin add -im or -ot (generally m/f) according to native rules, or just -s:cherub cherubim/cherubs seraph seraphim/seraphs matzah matzot/matzahs kibbutz kibbutzim/kibbutzes
Ot is pronounced os (with unvoiced s) in the Ashkenazi dialect.
- Many nouns of JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
origin have no plural form and do not change:benshi benshi otaku otaku samurai samurai
Other nouns such as kimonos, ninjas, futons, and tsunamis are more often seen with a regular English plural. However, there are nouns such as "mawashi" that are seen with an irregular plural: mawashia.
- In New Zealand EnglishNew Zealand EnglishNew Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
, nouns of MāoriMaori languageMāori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
origin can either take an -s or have no separate plural form. Words more connected to Māori culture and used in that context tend to retain the same form, while names of flora and fauna may or may not take an -s, depending on context. Many regard omission as more correct:kiwi kiwi/kiwis kowhai kowhai/kowhais Māori Māori/(occasionally Māoris) marae marae tui tuis/tui waka waka
When referring to the bird, kiwi may or may not take an -s; when used as an informal term for a New Zealander, it always takes an -s.
Māori, when referring to a person of that ethnicity, does not usually take an -s. Many speakers avoid the use of Māori as a noun, and instead use it only as an adjective.
- In CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, some words borrowed from InuktitutInuktitutInuktitut or Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian Inuit language is the name of some of the Inuit languages spoken in Canada...
retain traditional plurals (see also Plurals of names of peoples, below):Inuk Inuit inukshuk inukshuit
- Nouns from languages other than the above generally form plurals as if they were native English words:
canoe canoes cwm cwms (Welsh Welsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
valley)igloo igloos kangaroo kangaroos kayak kayaks kindergarten kindergartens pizza pizzas sauna saunas ninja ninjas
Words better known in the plural
Some words of foreign origin are much better known in the plural; usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic or actually incorrect or worse by some speakers. In common usage, the original plural is considered to be the singular form. In many cases, back-formationBack-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
has produced a regularized plural.
| Original singular | Original plural/ common singular |
Common plural |
|---|---|---|
| agendum | agenda | agendas |
| alga | algae | algae |
| bacterium | bacteria | bacteria |
| biscotto | biscotti | biscotti |
| candelabrum | candelabra | candelabras |
| datum | data | data (mass noun) |
| graffito | graffiti | graffiti (mass noun) |
| insigne | insignia | insignias |
| opus | opera | operas |
| panino | panini | paninis (currently gaining use) |
| paparazzo | paparazzi | paparazzi |
| spaghetto | spaghetti | spaghetti |
An agenda commonly is used to mean a list of agendum.
A single piece of data is sometimes referred to as a data point. In engineering, drafting, surveying, and geodesy, and in weight and balance calculations for aircraft, a datum
Datum
A geodetic datum is a reference from which measurements are made. In surveying and geodesy, a datum is a set of reference points on the Earth's surface against which position measurements are made, and an associated model of the shape of the earth to define a geographic coordinate system...
(plural datums or data) is a reference point, surface, or axis on an object or the earth’s surface against which measurements are made.
Some plural nouns are used as such —invariably being accompanied by a plural verb form— while their singular forms are rarely encountered:
| nuptial | nuptials |
| phalanx | phalanges |
| tiding | tidings |
| victual | victuals |
| viscus | viscera |
In medical terminology, a phalanx is any bone of the finger or toe. A military phalanx is pluralized phalanxes.
A related phenomenon is the confusion of a foreign plural for its singular form:
| criterion | criteria |
| phenomenon | phenomena |
| consortium | consortia |
| symposium | symposia |
Magazine was derived from Arabic via French. It was originally plural, but in French and English, it is always regarded as singular.
Plurals of numbers
English, like some other languages, treats large numerals as nouns (cf. "there were ten soldiers" and "there were a hundred soldiers"). Thus, dozens is preferred to tens, while hundreds and thousands are also completely acceptable.Plurals of numbers differ according to how they are used. The following rules apply to dozen, score, hundred, thousand, million, and similar terms:
- When modified by a number, the plural is not inflected, that is, has no -s added. Hence one hundred, two hundred, etc. For vaguer large numbers, one may indifferently say several hundred or several hundreds.
- When used alone, or followed by a prepositional phrase, the plural is inflected: dozens of complaints, scores of people. However, either complaints by the dozen or complaints by the dozens is acceptable (although differing in meaning).
- The preposition of is used when speaking of nonspecific items identified by pronouns: two hundred of these, three dozen of those. The of is not used for a number of specific items: three hundred oscilloscopeOscilloscopeAn oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
s. However, if the pronoun is included with the specific item, the of is used: five million of those dollar bills.
A sagan of any kind of items is at least four billion, as in billions and billions. Hence, "about a sagan of micrometeorites."
Nouns used attributively
Nouns used attributively to qualify other nouns are generally in the singular, even though for example, a dog catcher catches more than one dog, and a department store has more than one department. This is true even for some binary nouns where the singular form is not found in isolation, such as a trouser mangle or the scissor kick. This is also true where the attribute noun is itself qualified with a number, such as a twenty-dollar bill, a ten-foot pole or a two-man tent. The plural is used for pluralia tantum nouns: a glasses case is for eyeglasses, while a glass case is made of glass (but compare eyeglass case); also an arms race versus arm wrestling. The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
but very rarely in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
: a careers advisor, a languages expert. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: women killers are women who kill, whereas woman killers are those who kill women.
Defective nouns
Some nouns have no singular form. Such a noun is called a plurale tantumPlurale tantum
A plurale tantum is a noun that appears only in the plural form and does not have a singular variant for referring to a single object...
(see also Words better known in the plural above):
- cattle, billiards, clothes, measles, news, thanks
Some of these do have singular adjective forms, such as billiard ball. In addition, some are treated as singular in certain sentences, e.g., "billiards is a game played on a table with billiard balls and a cue", "measles is an infectious disease". Thanks is usually treated as a plural. Although "cow" is sometimes used in colloquial English for cattle, the term is age and gender specific.
A particular set of nouns, describing things having two parts, comprises the major group of pluralia tantum in modern English:
- glasses (a pair of spectacles), pants, panties, pantyhosePantyhosePantyhose are sheer, close-fitting legwear, covering the wearer's body from the waist to the feet. Mostly considered to be a woman's and girl's garment, pantyhose appeared in the 1960s, and they provided a convenient alternative to stockings...
, pliers, scissorsScissorsScissors are hand-operated cutting instruments. They consist of a pair of metal blades pivoted so that the sharpened edges slide against each other when the handles opposite to the pivot are closed. Scissors are used for cutting various thin materials, such as paper, cardboard, metal foil, thin...
, shorts, suspendersSuspendersSuspenders or braces are fabric or leather straps worn over the shoulders to hold up trousers. Straps may be elasticated, either entirely or only at attachment ends and most straps are of woven cloth forming an X or Y shape at the back. Braces are typically attached to trousers with buttons...
, tongs (metalworking & cooking), trousersTrousersTrousers are an item of clothing worn on the lower part of the body from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately...
, etc.
These words are interchangeable with a pair of scissors, a pair of trousers, and so forth. In the American fashion industry it is common to refer to a single pair of pants as a pant —though this is a back-formation
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
, the English word (deriving from the French pantalon) was originally singular. In the same field, one half of a pair of scissors separated from the other half is, rather illogically, referred to as a half-scissor. Tweezers used to be part of this group, but tweezer has come into common usage only since the second half of the twentieth century.
Mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
s (or uncountable nouns) do not represent distinct objects, so the singular and plural semantics do not apply in the same way. Some examples:
- Abstract nouns
- deceit, information, cunning, and nouns derived from adjectives, such as honesty, wisdom, beauty, intelligence, poverty, stupidity, curiosity, and words ending with "ness", such as goodness, freshness, laziness, and nouns which are homonyms of adjectives with a similar meaning, such as good, bad (can also use goodness and badness), hot, and cold.
- In the arts and sciences
- chemistry, geometry, surgery, the blues, jazz, rock and roll, impressionism, surrealism. This includes those that look plural but function as grammatically singular in English: mathematicsMathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, physics, mechanics, dynamics, statics, thermodynamicsThermodynamicsThermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
, aerodynamicsAerodynamicsAerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...
, electronicsElectronicsElectronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, hydrodynamics, roboticsRoboticsRobotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
, acoustics, optics, computer graphics, cryptographyCryptographyCryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
, ethicsEthicsEthics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, linguisticsLinguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, etc.; e.g., Mathematics is fun; Cryptography is the science of codes and ciphers; theromodynamics is the science of heat.
- Chemical elements and other physical entities:
- aluminum, copper, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, equipment, furniture, traffic, species, earth, air, fire, and water
Referring to the musical style as a whole.
Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. For example, when I have two grain(s) of sand, I do not have two sands; I have sand. There is more sand in your pile than in mine, not more sands. However, there could be the many "sands of Africa" — either many distinct stretches of sand, or distinct types of sand of interest to geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
s or builders, or simply the allusive The Sands of Mars
The Sands of Mars
The Sands of Mars is Arthur C. Clarke's first published science fiction novel. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story...
.
It is rare to pluralize furniture in this way. Nor is information ever pluralized.
There is only one class of atoms called oxygen, but there are several isotopes of oxygen, which might be referred to as different oxygens. In casual speech, oxygen might be used as shorthand for "oxygen atoms", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so it is entirely sensible to refer to multiple oxygens in the same molecule.
One would interpret Bob's wisdoms as various pieces of Bob's wisdom (that is, don't run with scissors, defer to those with greater knowledge), deceits as a series of instances of deceitful behavior (lied on income tax, dated my wife), and the different idlenesses of the worker as plural distinct manifestations of the mass concept of idleness (or as different types of idleness, "bone lazy" versus "no work to do").
Specie versus species make a fascinating case. Both words come from a Latin word meaning "kind", but they do not form a singular-plural pair. In Latin, specie is the ablative singular form, while species is the nominative form, which happens to be the same in both singular and plural. In English, species behaves similarly —as a noun with identical singular and plural— while specie is treated as a mass noun, referring to money in the form of coins (the idea is of "[payment] in kind").
Plurals of compound nouns
The majority of English compoundCompound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
nouns have one basic term, or head
Head (linguistics)
In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
, with which they end, and are pluralized in typical fashion:
| able seaman | able seamen |
| head banger | head bangers |
| yellow-dog contract | yellow-dog contracts |
A compound that has one head, with which it begins, usually pluralizes its head:
| attorney general | attorneys general |
| bill of attainder | bills of attainder |
| court martial | courts martial |
| director general | directors general |
| fee simple absolute | fees simple absolute |
| governor-general | governors-general |
| passerby | passersby |
| ship of the line | ships of the line |
| son-in-law | sons-in-law |
| minister-president | ministers-president |
| knight-errant | knights-errant |
| procurator fiscal (in Scotland) | procurators fiscal |
It is common in informal speech to instead pluralize the last word in the manner typical of most English nouns, but in edited prose, the forms given above are preferred.
If a compound can be thought to have two heads, both of them tend to be pluralized when the first head has an irregular plural form:
| man-child | men-children |
| manservant | menservants |
| woman doctor | women doctors |
Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head:
| city-state | city-states |
| nurse-practitioner | nurse-practitioners |
| scholar-poet | scholar-poets |
In military usage, the term general, as part of an officer's title, is etymologically an adjective, but it has been adopted as a noun and thus a head, so compound titles employing it are pluralized at the end:
| brigadier general | brigadier generals |
| major general | major generals |
For compounds of three or more words that have a head (or a term functioning as a head) with an irregular plural form, only that term is pluralized:
| man-about-town | men-about-town |
| man-of-war | men-of-war |
| woman of the street | women of the street |
For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front —especially in cases where the compound is ad hoc and/or the head is metaphorical— it is generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last (if open when singular, such compounds tend to take hyphens when plural in the latter case):
| ham on rye | hams on rye/ham-on-ryes |
| jack-in-the-box | jacks-in-the-box/jack-in-the-boxes |
| jack-in-the-pulpit | jacks-in-the-pulpit/jack-in-the-pulpits |
With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g., heads of state):
| head of state | heads of states/heads of state |
| son of a bitch | sons of bitches/sons-of-a-bitch |
With extended compounds constructed around o, only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural):
| cat-o'-nine-tails | cat-o'-nine-tails |
| jack-o'-lantern | jack-o'-lanterns |
| will-o'-the-wisp | will-o'-the-wisps |
Compounds from the French
Many English compounds have been borrowedLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
directly from the French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. French-loaned compounds with a head at the beginning tend to pluralize both words, according to French practice:
| agent provocateur | agents provocateurs |
| entente cordiale | ententes cordiales |
| fait accompli | faits accomplis |
| idée fixe | idées fixes |
For compounds adopted directly from the French where the head comes at the end, it is generally regarded as acceptable either to pluralize both words or only the last:
| beau geste | beaux gestes/beau gestes |
| belle époque | belles époques/belle époques |
| bon mot | bons mots/bon mots |
| bon vivant | bons vivants/bon vivants |
| bel homme | beaux hommes |
If the adjectives beau "beautiful/handsome", nouveau "new", or vieux "old" precede a masculine singular noun beginning with a vowel or a mute "h", they are changed to bel, nouvel, and vieil to help ease the pronunciation. The normal plural rule applies to plural nouns.
French-loaned compounds longer than two words tend to follow the rules of the original language, which usually involves pluralizing only the head at the beginning:
| aide-de-camp | aides-de-camp |
| cri de coeur | cris de coeur |
| coup d'état | coups d'état |
| tour de force | tours de force |
but:
| tête-à-tête | tête-à-têtes |
A distinctive case is the compound film noir. For this French-loaned artistic term, English-language texts variously use as the plural films noirs, films noir, and, most prevalently, film noirs. The 11th edition of the standard Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2006) lists film noirs as the preferred style. Three primary bases may be identified for this:
- Unlike other compounds borrowed directly from the French, film noir is used to refer primarily to English-language cultural artifacts; a typically English-style plural is thus unusually appropriate.
- Again, unlike other foreign-loaned compounds, film noir refers specifically to the products of popular culture; consequently, popular usage holds more orthographical authority than is usual.
- English has adopted noir as a stand-alone noun in artistic contexts, leading it to serve as the lone head in a variety of compounds (e.g., psycho-noir, sci-fi noir).
See also the headless nouns section below.
Plurals (and singulars) of headless nouns
In The Language InstinctThe Language Instinct
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
, linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
discusses what he calls "headless words", typically bahuvrihi
Bahuvrihi
A bahuvrihi compound is a type of compound that denotes a referent by specifying a certain characteristic or quality the referent possesses. A bahuvrihi is exocentric, so that the compound is not a hyponym of its head...
compounds, like lowlife and Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
, in which life and sox are not heads
Head (linguistics)
In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, nor are Red Sox a group of similarly colored socks. When the common form of such a word is singular, it is treated as if it has a regular plural, even if the final constituent of the word is usually pluralized in a nonregular fashion. Thus, more than one lowlife are lowlifes, not "lowlives", according to Pinker. A related process can be observed with the compound maple leaf, pluralized in its common-noun form as maple leaves; when it is adopted as the name of an ice-hockey team, its plural becomes Maple Leafs
Toronto Maple Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They are members of the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...
. Other proposed examples include:
| flatfoot | flatfoots |
| sabertooth | sabertooths |
| still life | still lifes |
| tenderfoot | tenderfoots |
An exception is Blackfoot
Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
, of which the plural can be Blackfeet, though that form of the name is officially rejected by the Blackfoot First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
of Canada.
Where words have taken on completely new meanings, irregular plurals may become regularized. Antennas is the accepted plural of antenna when it refers to electromagnetic equipment
Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...
, in contrast to antennae
Antenna (biology)
Antennae in biology have historically been paired appendages used for sensing in arthropods. More recently, the term has also been applied to cilium structures present in most cell types of eukaryotes....
for arthropod
Arthropod
An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...
s' and insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s' feelers. The computer mouse
Mouse (computing)
In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
is sometimes considered headless and pluralized as mouses, but also often as mice; in contrast to the compound headless words just discussed, there is a considerably stronger metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical relationship in this case, with many computer pointing devices resembling rodents with tails.
In other cases, the common form of a headless word is a nonregular plural; when such a word lacks a terminal s, it is treated as defective, thus making the singular version of the word identical: an individual member of the Boston baseball team is a Red Sox, just as all twenty-five are. One Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox
The Chicago White Sox are a Major League Baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois.The White Sox play in the American League's Central Division. Since , the White Sox have played in U.S. Cellular Field, which was originally called New Comiskey Park and nicknamed The Cell by local fans...
is a White Sox (questionable).
Related collective nouns
Sports team names like those discussed above —as well as more grammatically ordinary names such as RedsCincinnati Reds
The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are members of the National League Central Division. The club was established in 1882 as a charter member of the American Association and joined the National League in 1890....
, Knicks
New York Knickerbockers
The New York Knickerbockers were one of the first organized baseball teams which played under a set of rules similar to the game today. The team was founded by Alexander Cartwright, considered one of the original developers of modern baseball....
, and Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens
The Montreal Canadiens are a professional ice hockey team based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They are members of the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . The club is officially known as ...
, and straightforward compound names such as Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays are a professional baseball team located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball 's American League ....
— form a particular set of collective nouns. Closely related to the class of essentially plural headless nouns typified by Red Sox are the growing number of orthographically singular sports team names that may be classified as examples of a special type of collective noun — one that (a) has identical terms for both the collective and an individual thereof (as with the essentially plural headless noun) but (b) is not used as a counting noun beyond the singular. Two examples include the name of the NBA team of Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
— the Miami Heat
Miami Heat
The Miami Heat is a professional basketball team based in Miami, Florida, United States. The team is a member of the Southeast Division in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association . They play their home games at American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami...
— and the name of the Colorado NHL team —the Colorado Avalanche
Colorado Avalanche
The Colorado Avalanche are a professional ice hockey team based in Denver, Colorado, United States. They are members of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The Avalanche have won the Stanley Cup twice, in 1995–96 and 2000–01. The franchise...
. While heat is a mass noun, whereas avalanche is a normal counting noun, in the context of a team name, both words operate as this special type of collective noun. Just as with the Red Sox or the White Sox, any one of the twelve current members of Miami's pro basketball squad is a Heat (questionable). Similarly, any individual member of the Colorado Avalanche is an Avalanche. However, where one may say something like "two Red Sox struck out" or "four White Sox doubled consequitively", the equivalent term is invariably used as an adjective when referring to multiple players of one of the teams named in this increasingly popular way: "two Heat players fought" or "four Avalanche players scored" (The followers of the Avalanche have a little more flexibility available to them, with "Avs" as the team's unofficial, but widely used nickname). Other examples include:
| NHL | WNBA |
| Tampa Bay Lightning Tampa Bay Lightning The Tampa Bay Lightning are a professional ice hockey team based in Tampa, Florida. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . They have one Stanley Cup championship in their history, in 2003–04. They are often referred to as the... |
Indiana Fever Indiana Fever The Indiana Fever is a professional basketball team based in Indianapolis, Indiana, playing in the Eastern Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded before the 2000 season began... |
| Minnesota Wild Minnesota Wild The Minnesota Wild are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. They are members of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League .... |
New York Liberty New York Liberty The New York Liberty is a professional basketball team based in New York City, playing in the Eastern Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was one of the eight original franchises of the league... |
| NBA | Minnesota Lynx Minnesota Lynx The Minnesota Lynx are a professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded prior to the 1999 season... |
| Utah Jazz Utah Jazz The Utah Jazz is a professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City, Utah. They are currently a part of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association... |
Phoenix Mercury Phoenix Mercury The Phoenix Mercury is a professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded before the league's inaugural 1997 season began; it is one of the eight original franchises... |
| Orlando Magic Orlando Magic The Orlando Magic is a professional basketball team based in Orlando, Florida. They play in the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association and are currently coached by Stan Van Gundy... |
Detroit Shock Detroit Shock The Detroit Shock was a Women's National Basketball Association team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. They were the 2003, 2006 and 2008 WNBA champion... |
| Miami Heat Miami Heat The Miami Heat is a professional basketball team based in Miami, Florida, United States. The team is a member of the Southeast Division in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association . They play their home games at American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami... |
Chicago Sky Chicago Sky The Chicago Sky is a professional basketball team based in Rosemont, Illinois, playing in the Eastern Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded before the 2006 WNBA season began. The team is owned by Michael J. Alter and Margaret Stender... |
| MLS | Charlotte Sting Charlotte Sting The Charlotte Sting was a Women's National Basketball Association franchise based in Charlotte, North Carolina and it was one of the league's eight original teams. The team folded on January 3, 2007.... |
| Columbus Crew Columbus Crew The Columbus Crew is an American professional soccer club based in Columbus, Ohio which competes in Major League Soccer , the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada... |
Seattle Storm Seattle Storm The Seattle Storm is a professional basketball team based in Seattle, Washington, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded before the 2000 season began... |
| Houston Dynamo Houston Dynamo The Houston Dynamo is an American professional soccer club, based in Houston, Texas, that plays in Major League Soccer, the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. Founded in 2005 as Houston 1836, the team name was renamed to Houston Dynamo following protests from Hispanic... |
Connecticut Sun Connecticut Sun The Connecticut Sun is a professional basketball team based in Uncasville, Connecticut, playing in the Eastern Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association . The team was founded in Orlando, Florida before the 1999 season began; the team moved to Connecticut before the 2003 season... |
| Chicago Fire | |
| Los Angeles Galaxy Los Angeles Galaxy The Los Angeles Galaxy are an American professional soccer team, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, California, which competes in Major League Soccer , the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. It is one of the ten charter clubs of MLS, and the league's second... |
|
| New England Revolution New England Revolution The New England Revolution is an American professional association football club based in Foxborough, Massachusetts which competes in Major League Soccer , the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada... |
|
| D.C. United D.C. United D.C. United is an American professional soccer club based in Washington, D.C. which competes in Major League Soccer , the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. It is one of the ten charter clubs of MLS, having competed in the league since its inception, in 1996.Over the... |
In not every case above is it certain that the name is ever used in its noun form to refer to anything but the collective — i.e., not even to an individual player. In other cases, it is possible that the name is sometimes used in its noun form (with or without a terminal s appended) to refer to multiple players, short of the whole collective. Note that in the above list, there is a case of an irregular plural in the "Minnesota Lynx", since the plural of "lynx" is "lynx". For example, "The scout spotted 20 lynx living in the neighborhood of the Great Bear Lake
Great Bear Lake
Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely within Canada , the third or fourth largest in North America, and the seventh or eighth largest in the world...
."
An exceptional case is that of the St. Louis Blues ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...
team. The club is named after the song the "St. Louis Blues", which makes the team name Blues an irregularly pluralized word to begin with —one whose plural is identical to its singular. By this reckoning, then, an individual team member would also be a "Blues". However, because the name is spelled like a regular plural, its use as a collective noun leads to a process of back-formation
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
, with the result that a single player on the team is known as a "Blue". This team's name's distinctive orthographical nature further allows it to be used freely as a counting noun, so that one may speak of, for instance, "two Blues in the penalty box".
Pinker discussed a case that could be construed as opposite, that of the Florida Marlins
Florida Marlins
The Miami Marlins are a professional baseball team based in Miami, Florida, United States. Established in 1993 as an expansion franchise called the Florida Marlins, the Marlins are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League. The Marlins played their home games at...
baseball team. Describing how the issue was raised by the talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....
host David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
, Pinker asked, Why is the name the Marlins "given that those fish are referred to in the plural as marlin?" An analogous question could be asked about the Maple Leafs. Pinker's answer comes down to this: "A name is not the same thing as a noun." Consequently, names (and nouns that derive from names) based on nouns with irregular plurals do not acquire them — though, as we see with Red Sox, new irregularities may arise.
Nouns with multiple plurals
Some nouns have two plurals, one used to refer to a number of things considered individually, the other to refer to a number of things collectively. In some cases, one of the two is nowadays archaic or dialectal.| brother | brothers | brethren |
| cannon | cannons | cannon |
| child | children | childer |
| cloth | cloths | clothes |
| cow | cows | kine |
| die | dice | dies |
| fish | fish | fishes |
| iris (plant) | iris | irises |
| penny | pennies | pence |
| person | persons | people |
| pig | pigs | swine |
| sow | sows | swine |
Brethren was used exclusively earlier, but over time, it has been replaced by brothers. Brethren is still used in some contexts such as the brethren of a monastic order.
Childer has all but disappeared, but can still be seen in Childermas (Innocents' Day).
Clothes formerly referred collectively to all of a household's washable cloth articles, but clothes is now used almost exclusively for the garments of people and doll
Doll
A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...
s.
Kine is still used in some rural English dialects.
Dies is used as the plural for die in the sense of a mold; dice
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...
as the plural (and increasingly as the singular) in the sense of a small random number generator. Dice is also the accepted plural form of die in the semiconductor industry. On gambling and games, we may roll one die or toss two or three dice.
Fish: the plural for one species of fish, or caught fish, is fish, but for the plural of fish of multiple individuals or species fishes is used. Fishes is also a word with a Biblical connotation.
For multiple plants, iris is used, but irises is used for multiple blossoms.
If one has several (British) one-penny pieces, one has several pennies. Pence is used for an amount of money, which can be made up of a number of coins of different denominations: one penny and one five-penny piece are together worth six pence. The suffixed minor currency unit of "p" (/pi/) is often vocalised, where such small divisions of currency are discussed in common speech, and used for both the singular and the "amount plural", but "number plurals" build upon the base values and any omission of the unit shifts the plural to the coin's numerator (e.g. "I have a one /pi/ and three twenty /piz/ and two fifties in my pocket. I cannot believe that I only have one pound
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
, sixty-one /pi/ left after last night."). In written speech, a number of coins might be "two 10ps", although those that prefer to use apostrophes for initialisms might decide to use the variant of "two 10p's".
Penny and pennies also refer to one or more American or Canadian one-cent pieces, though in American and Canadian usage, a nickel is worth five cents, not five pence. Also, a dime
Dime
Dime may refer to:Currency* Dime * Dime Media and entertainment* Dime , by Guardian* "Dime" , by Beth* The Dimes, a musical group* Dime novel, a type of popular fictionSports* Dime...
is worth ten cents, not pence, and a quarter (dollar) is worth twenty-five cents, not pence.
The word people is usually treated as the suppletive
Suppletion
In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...
plural of person (one person, many people). However, in legal and other formal contexts, the plural of person is persons; furthermore, people can also be a singular noun with its own plural (for example, "We are many persons, from many peoples").
Plurals of symbols and initialisms
Individual letters and abbreviations whose plural would be ambiguous if only an -s were added are pluralized by adding -'s.- mind your p's and q's
- A.A.'s and B.A.'s
- the note had three PS's
Opinion is divided on whether to extend this use of the apostrophe to related but nonambiguous cases, such as the plurals of numerals (e.g., 1990's vs. 1990s) and words used as terms (e.g., "his writing uses a lot of but's" vs. "his writing uses a lot of buts"). Some writers favor the use of the apostrophe as consistent with its application in ambiguous cases; others say it confuses the plural with the possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...
-'s and should be avoided whenever possible in pluralization, a view with which The Chicago Manual of Style concurs.
English and many other European languages form the plural of a one-letter abbreviation by doubling it: p. ("page"), pp. ("pages"); l. ("line"), ll. ("lines"). These abbreviations are used in literary work, such as footnotes and bibliographies.
Acronyms are initialisms that are used and pronounced as if they were words. For example, we have AMTRAK, HAL, LEM, NASA, and NATO. These contrast with the different variety that are read aloud one letter at a time: {C.I.A., C.S.M., D.O.D., E.U., G.C.M., G.P.S., I.B.M., N.A.C.A., N.S.A., R.C.A., R.P.M., S.S.T., T.W.A., U.S.S.R., W.P.A., etc.}
The most consistent approach for pluralizing pronounceable acronyms is to simply add a lowercase "s" as its suffix. This works even for acronyms ending with an s, such as with CASs , while still making it possible to use the possessive form ("'s") for the acronyms without confusion. (One sometimes sees "-es" added, which also works acceptably: "OSes.") The old, old style of pluralizing single letters with "'s" was naturally extended to acronyms when they were all commonly written with periods. This form is still preferred by some people for all initialisms and thus "'s" as a suffix is often seen in informal usage.
Plural to singular by back-formation
Some words have unusually formed singulars and plurals, but develop "normal" singular-plural pairs by back-formationBack-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
. For example, pease (modern peas) was in origin a singular with plural peasen. However, pease came to be analysed as plural by analogy, from which a new singular pea was formed; the spelling of pease was also altered accordingly, surviving only in the name of the dish pease porridge or pease pudding. Similarly, termites was the three-syllable plural of termes; this singular was lost, however, and the plural form reduced to two syllables. Syringe is a back-formation from syringes, itself the plural of syrinx
Syrinx
In classical mythology, Syrinx was a nymph and a follower of Artemis, known for her chastity. Pursued by the amorous Greek god Pan, she ran to the river's edge and asked for assistance from the river nymphs. In answer, she was transformed into hollow water reeds that made a haunting sound when...
, a musical instrument. Cherry is from Norman French
Norman language
Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...
cherise. Phases was once the plural of phasis, but the singular is now phase.
Kudos is a singular Greek word meaning praise, but is often taken to be a plural. At present, however, kudo is considered an error, though the usage is becoming more common as kudos becomes better known. The name of the Greek sandwich style gyros is increasingly undergoing a similar transformation.
The term, from Latin, for the main upper arm flexor in the singular is the biceps muscle (from biceps brachii); however, many English speakers take it to be a plural and refer to the muscle of only one arm, by back-formation, as a bicep. The correct —although very seldom used— Latin plural would be bicipites.
The word sastrugi (hard ridges on deep snow) is of Russian origin and its singular is sastruga; but the imaginary Latin-type singular sastrugus has sometimes been used.
Place names
Geographical place names ending with an "s" generally function as grammatically singular even if they look plural, for example: Arkansas, Athens, the AndesAndes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Chartres
Chartres
Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...
, Dallas, Kansas, Naples, New Orleans, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
(France or Texas), the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Santos
Santos
Santos, originally Portuguese or Spanish for Saints , is a common surname in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries and the Philippines. Sometimes it can be the final part of a given name, generally preceded by the particle dos or de los...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. For example, "The United States is a country in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
."
Plurals of names of peoples
There are several different rules for this.In discussing peoples whose demonym
Demonym
A demonym , also referred to as a gentilic, is a name for a resident of a locality. A demonym is usually – though not always – derived from the name of the locality; thus, the demonym for the people of England is English, and the demonym for the people of Italy is Italian, yet, in english, the one...
takes -man or -woman, there are three options: pluralize to -men or -women if referring to individuals, and use the root alone if referring to the whole nation, or add people.
| Dutchman Dutchwoman |
Dutchmen Dutchwomen |
the Dutch |
| Englishman Englishwoman |
Englishmen Englishwomen |
the English |
| Frenchman Frenchwoman |
Frenchmen Frenchwomen |
the French |
| Irishman Irishwoman |
Irishmen Irishwomen |
the Irish |
| Scotsman Scotswoman |
Scotsmen Scotswomen |
the Scots |
| Welshman Welshwoman |
Welshmen Welshwomen |
the Welsh |
One can say "a Scots(wo)man" or "a Scot", "Scots(wo)men", "Scottish people", or "Scots", and "the Scottish" or "the Scots". (Scotch is considered old fashioned.)
Several peoples have names that are simple nouns and can be pluralized by the addition of either -s or -ish (the later case often calls for the elimination of terminal letters so the pluralizing suffix can be connected directly with the last consonant of the root):
| Dane | Danes | the Danes the Danish |
| Finn | Finns | the Finns the Finnish |
| Spaniard | Spaniards | the Spaniards the Spanish (much more common) |
| Swede | Swedes | the Swedes the Swedish |
Names of peoples that end in -ese take no plural:
| Chinese | Chinese Chinese people |
the Chinese |
| Japanese | Japanese Japanese people |
the Japanese |
Other names of peoples that have no plural form include Swiss and Québécois, although the latter is sometimes interchangeable with Quebec(k)er, which pluralizes as Quebec(k)ers.
Most names for Native Americans are not pluralized:
- Blackfoot
- Cherokee
- Cree
- Comanchee
- Delaware
- Hopi
- Iroquois
- Kiowa
- Navajo
- Ojibwa
- Sioux
- Zuni, for example
Some exceptions include Algonquins, Apaches, Aztecs, Black Hawks, Chippewas, Hurons, Incas, Mayans, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Seminoles. Note also the following words borrowed from Inuktitut
Inuktitut
Inuktitut or Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian Inuit language is the name of some of the Inuit languages spoken in Canada...
:
| Inuk | Inuit |
| Iqalummiuq | Iqalummiut ("inhabitant of Iqaluit") |
| Nunavimmiuq | Nunavimmiut ("inhabitant of Nunavik Nunavik Nunavik comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, Canada. Covering a land area of 443,684.71 km² north of the 55th parallel, it is the homeland of the Inuit of Quebec... ") |
| Nunavummiuq | Nunavummiut ("inhabitant of Nunavut Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993... ") |
Names of most other peoples of the world are pluralized using the normal English rules.
Discretionary plurals
A number of words like army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set that compose it. Thus, as H. W. Fowler describes, in British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree." Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England
England national football team
The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...
are playing Germany
Germany national football team
The Germany national football team is the football team that has represented Germany in international competition since 1908. It is governed by the German Football Association , which was founded in 1900....
tonight refers to a football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country. In North American English
North American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
, such words are invariably treated as singular.
"Snob plurals"
Another type of irregular plural occurs in the register of the English upper classes in the context of field sports, where the singular form is used in place of the plural, as in "two lion" or "five pheasant". Eric PartridgeEric Partridge
Eric Honeywood Partridge was a New Zealand/British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps and the RAF correspondence department during World War II...
refers to these as "snob plurals" and conjectures that they may have developed by analogy with the common English irregular plural animal words "deer", "sheep" and "trout".
See also
- English collective nounsEnglish collective nounsIn linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects, where objects can be people, animals, emotions, inanimate things, concepts, or other things. For example, in the phrase "a pride of lions", pride is a collective noun....
- English verbsEnglish verbsVerbs in the English language are a part of speech and typically describe an action, an event, or a state.While English has many irregular verbs , for the regular ones the conjugation rules are quite straightforward...
- English personal pronounsEnglish personal pronounsThe personal pronouns in the English language can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little noun or adjective inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns...
- Count nounCount nounIn linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
- Mass nounMass nounIn linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
- Singular theySingular theySingular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
External links
- Rules for Irregular Plural Formation of Nouns summary by Pat Byrd, Department of Applied Linguistics & ESL, Georgia State University
- An Algorithmic Approach to English Pluralization by Damian Conway
- Freebase Pluraliser API plural names of freebase.com topics by David HuynhDavid HuynhDavid Huynh is a Canadian Actor. Huynh won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival for Outstanding Newcomer Award and Best Emerging Actor for his performance in Juwan Chung's Baby, which also won a Special Jury Award for Best Feature Length Film at that year's...