The defective-nouns tag has no wiki summary.
4
votes
7answers
4k views
Why does the incorrect plural “aircrafts” seem to be occurring more often?
My first reaction to aircrafts was to think it was a typo, but I just checked usage on NGrams...
...and compared it to usage for the singular / collective noun form aircraft...
...which seems to ...
1
vote
1answer
892 views
What is the proper plural of “a series”? [closed]
In math, we use the term series a lot, and there are many types of series.
How should I craft my sentence when I have three different ones in mind to talk about? Should I settle down for a less ...
1
vote
0answers
35 views
Special plural forms without -s [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Irregular plurality situations in English
'sheep, deer, fish' are some of a row of animals where singular and plural have the same form, i.e. the plural (normally) has ...
22
votes
2answers
2k views
Why is 'sheep' the same when talking about one or more than one?
I am trying to find out why sheep has the plural sheep. I have found different explanations, such as, "it is because they were seen as uncountable, as in 'a herd of sheep'", "because it comes from ...
3
votes
2answers
531 views
Irregular plurality situations in English
Why do some nouns in English not take the plurality suffix in the plural form? Could you give me a list of plural nouns which don't take "-(e)s" suffix? For example, I know about "fish" and "sheep".
13
votes
3answers
4k views
Is there a term for words that have identical singular and plural forms?
Is there a term for nouns that have identical singular and plural forms? For example,
sheep
fish
glasses
aircraft/spacecraft
etc.
