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I'm reading a novel based in ye olde pirate-times, and I have come across the author's usage of "cannon" (without the "s") to refer to multiple cannons.

The ship boasted 32 cannon onboard.

Is this just an archaic usage that the author is employing for purposes of story-telling? Also, how/why did this evolve to "cannons" in modern usage?

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    Interesting question. In German, a very similar thing can be observed with man: "We had 32 man onboard", "an army of 10,000 man", etc. (yes, singular). It is especially common in the military domain, and has been for centuries, but it has long spread out into everyday language as well. "Eight man are working on fixing the bugs" is something a native German speaker would produce without hesitation. Saying "eight men" instead would actually sound quite funny.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Oct 30, 2010 at 16:27
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    @RegDwight: We do it exactly the same way in Dutch, in the context of a group of people (can be women) working on something, personnel, staff, something like that. Er werken tien man aan dat project ("ten man are working on that project"). The verb is plural, while man is singular (plural would be mannen). However, this is not at all possible with kanon: it must always be pluralized if you have several guns (kanonnen).
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 31, 2012 at 20:17

3 Answers 3

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Strange as it seems, cannon does appear to have once been a mass noun, like rain or infantry. Instead of saying rains, one says drops of rain. Similarly, instead of saying cannons, it appears that one either said cannon or pieces of cannon. Consider the google Ngram below:

two cannon/cannons/pieces of cannon

Here, the curve for two cannon is higher than it should be, because of constructions like two cannon balls.

Tsuyoshi is right about cannons being the plural in the 1500's; Google Ngrams doesn't have adequate data before early the 1700's, but we can check Shakespeare, who uses cannon as a regular count noun. So the plural has gone from cannons, to pieces of cannon, to cannon, and back to cannons.

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    Personally, I think cannon is indeed supposed to be a quantity noun. This isn't widely known today simply because cannon themselves are obsolete.
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Aug 10, 2011 at 17:52
  • "Cannon" isn't a mass noun there though. It's just a noun with an irregular plural. Compare "32 cannon" and "32 rain" or "The cannon were moved to the front of the field" and "The rain was awful" and "The rain were awful". Cannon is till an alternative plural of cannon nowadays. The reason for the decline of plural "cannon" is, well, that we don't use cannons so much any more!!.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 14:37
  • Here's an Ngram for "the cannon were" versus "The cannons were". Notice that "The cannon were" is still more common than "The cannons were" in printed books: books.google.com/ngrams/… Note that, in addition, "cannons were" of course includes result for other types of cannons (which don't ever have irregular plurals) :)
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 14:39
  • FWIW Merriam Webster say "plural usually cannon" in relation to the military weapons.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 14:47
  • @Araucaria: but cannon was a mass noun between 1750 and 1800, and didn't lose its mass-noun properties completely until the beginning of the 20th century. Consider this Ngram. People said "two pieces of cannon were" rather than "two cannon were". That's the mark of a mass noun.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 15:21
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I do not know English well enough to say anything about the question from my personal experience. However, a quick look at dictionaries suggests that it may not be the case that the plural form of “cannon” evolved from “cannon” to “cannons.”

  • The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (cannon, n.1 2b; the linked page requires subscription) lists the use of “cannon” as a collective noun and as plural, but it does not state that this use is obsolete. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary also lists both “cannons” and “cannon” as the plural forms of the noun “cannon.” (I do not personally know whether the construct such as “32 cannon” is correct in the modern English.)
  • The first quotation of “cannons” cited in OED is in 1525, which is earlier than the first quotation of “cannon” as a collective noun or plural in 1596.
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  • Yes, this is correct. Cannon is plural in the OP's answer, not a mass noun. And it is still standard and more prevalent than the plural cannons in modern written English.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 14:50
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Similar usage occurs when describing naval ships from the days of sail: e.g. "a 28-gun frigate". Readers of Bernard Cornwell's tales of the Peninsular War against Napoleon will see repeated use, as in "the French cannon opened the attack." And then there's Tennyson's "Cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered."

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    The grammar of "28-gun frigate" isn't the same as "frigate with 28 cannon". We never talk about "four-doors cars", for example, but it would be perfectly ok to speak of a "frigate with 28 cannons". It's just that cannon can be singular or plural.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 8, 2011 at 23:45

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