When I read some of these Winnie the Pooh stories to my kids at night, the place where the story takes place is the Hundred Acre Wood, not Hundred Acre Woods.
Why is that?
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2Why would it be "Hundred Acre Woods"?– MarcinMay 20, 2011 at 19:10
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7From the title, I thought you were going to ask about the alternative Hundred Acres Wood — to which the response would have been that nouns used as adjectives tend not to decline, e.g. multi-million dollar project.– HenryMay 20, 2011 at 19:23
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Related (not dupe): When would you say “woods”, and when would you say “forest”?– MrHenMay 20, 2011 at 22:58
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3 Answers
Winnie the Pooh was written by an English author, and thus follows the British English usage that wood is both plural and singular.
Apparently woods is an American construction. In fact, I can't verify that woods is a really a word, but it certainly sounds like one to my American ear.
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2Yes, "woods" is a word, "There are many different woods. Oak, maple, and larch are three of them." May 20, 2011 at 19:38
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@Kosmonaut Isn't the World English Dictionary written by Encarta? That would explain woods. @Viktor I meant that as a playful reference to the ambiguous grammaticality of the word.– HaLMay 20, 2011 at 20:11
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granted, and understood; I thought it warranted an example of how it could be used differently to the main context of discussion. May 20, 2011 at 20:29
Wood and woods are interchangeable.
wood |woŏd|
noun
2 (also woods) an area of land, smaller than a forest, that is covered with growing trees : a thick hedge divided the wood from the field | a long walk in the woods.
from NOAD
EDIT: According to @HaL, wood is standard in BrE and would have thus been used by A. A. Milne, an English author.
(In AmE, we do indeed often use woods)
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"walk in the woods" is the only example I can think of for 's' in BE. Otherwise "woods" would mean a range of different species of wood as a material.– mgbMay 20, 2011 at 19:43
This is hard to explain, but I would say, as a British speaker, that 'woods' has the flavour of a mass noun, whereas 'wood' is a count noun. When you're talking about a specific small forest, it's a wood - Hundred Acre Wood, Bricket Wood, St John's Wood, Highgate Wood, South Norwood, Goodwood, etc. But if you're talking about some indeterminate patch of trees, it's woods - you might be lost in the woods, strolling around the woods, not be out of the woods yet, etc. Perhaps it's a wood when seen from the outside, but woods when seen from the inside.
Having said that, where i grew up, we used to play in Wivenhoe Woods. Googling, i do find lots of references to Wivenhoe Wood, but the usage i heard was definitely plural, and that usage also finds attestation on the internet. The nearest big supermarket back then was at Highwoods. Perhaps this is an Essex quirk; it wouldn't be the only one.
answered May 20, 2011 at 22:37
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Just what I was going to say. And emphasise that "woods" is a mass noun: "a woods" is not normal in British English, though I understand it is in US. May 21, 2011 at 0:35
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@Colin: I think Americans would be more likely to say "some woods" rather than "a woods" when talking about what would be "a wood" in British English. However, this changes when we add an adjective, we would definitely say "a small woods", for example. May 21, 2011 at 1:17
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2@Peter: Careful with that "we". "A small woods" sounds odd to me. May 21, 2011 at 9:44
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@Tom: Okay, some Americans would say "a small woods." (you can use Google to check that it's not just me). What would you call the thing called "a small wood" in British English? May 21, 2011 at 9:52
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