Is it grammatically correct to say it's 1 degrees outside or is it 1 degree outside? (Talking about the weather in Buffalo, New York.)
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1Yes, either one. In rapid speech the "1" matters and the inflection doesn't. Think of it as being the "°" degree mark after the number: "1°, 21°" are both the same. – John Lawler Jan 3 '14 at 17:40
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I recommend "It's F***in' cold outside!" :-) – Hellion Jan 3 '14 at 19:10
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possible duplicate of Correct plural form of a zero quantified noun. As the accepted answer there says, In English, every number that is not 1 is considered plural. – FumbleFingers Jan 3 '14 at 19:11
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5Also I have to disagree with @JohnLawler on this; "1°" is always "one degree" and "21°" is always "twenty-one degrees" in the same way that $1 is different than $21. – Hellion Jan 3 '14 at 19:14
No it is not correct. 1 is a singular unit, so at 1 degree you are one unit above your zero point.
You can have 1 or -1 degree outside. Anything else should be plural.
I would say 1 degrees is correct. We are not discussing an amount of things. 1 is not number of degrees that exsist. It isn't the same as saying 1 cookie. Rather 1 is an idication of your possition on a scale called degrees. I would even venture that it is incorrect to say 1 degree celcius or fahrenheit.
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2It doesn’t matter whether we are counting a number of degrees that exist or not. The number 1 always mandatorily takes the singular. You also did not do something one hours or one days ago. It is in no way incorrect to say it’s 1 degree, regardless of whether you’re talking Celsius or Fahrenheit, but the plural form would be considered ungrammatical by virtually all native speakers. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 17 '18 at 0:02
