Questions tagged [irregular-plurals]

For questions about words which have an irregular plural form.

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Fishes and Deers

I saw a video clip with the concept of a plural of plurals. Here is an example: In the ocean there are many fish. I saw 3 different kinds of fishes. First, is this correct usage? If so, could I ...
Vaccano's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
63 views

Can I pluralize compound proper nouns, like "Aunts Jane" for two aunts with the same name?

If I have an aunt named Jane, then I would write "Aunt Jane," where "Aunt" is capitalized because it is part of a proper noun. If I have two aunts that are named Jane, would I ...
wintergreen_plaza's user avatar
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0 answers
45 views

What are the plural equivalents of Messrs for Ms, Miss & Mrs? [duplicate]

Mr. smith and Mr. Jones can be expressed as Messrs. Smith and Jones. How can Ms. Smith and Ms. Jones, or Miss Smith and Miss Jones, or Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones respectively be so consolidated?
Seeking answers's user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
6k views

How did "oxen" (plural of "ox") survive as the only plural form with the Old English plural ending -en?

Oxen is a rare exception in English where it is the only common English word that retains the original Old English plural ending -en. (Note: Children and brethren are formed a bit differently, please ...
ermanen's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
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What’s special about the word “fish” [duplicate]

When there are two or more carps, you can say “there are fish”, treating singular form of fish without plural suffix “s” as a plural, but I think normally it doesn’t apply to other nouns, is that ...
Kmd's user avatar
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0 votes
3 answers
158 views

Can a stables (for horses) be used as a singular noun?

A "stable" is the compartment where an individual horse is housed. A "stables" is the building which contains multiple stables/horses. So the stables is a singular building, but ...
Dasmowenator's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
286 views

“And to the many of you, William.”

I was taken aback by this phrase directed at me in response to my “Merry Christmas”. And to the many of you, William. Is it in any way correct? Perhaps it is Old English, or a quote from a period ...
Will Ellingham's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
140 views

Is it "three types of fish" or "three types of fishes"?

I have learnt that the plural of fish is still fish. However, if we refer to different types of fish, we can use fishes; for example: The aquarium has three fishes: goldfish, carp, and guppy. If ...
Marcus Vitruvius's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
51 views

Why use 'has' when the word before it is plural noun? [closed]

I have an English book, in which there is a sentence that confuses me. The sentence is In the past years, the business of clothes has grown well. I'm confused because why the author use the word '...
always learns's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
4k views

Why is “one hundreds” in plural form on this stack of hundred dollar bills?

To me, two hundreds of books or one hundred of books is natural. Why is “one hundreds” in the picture in plural form?
xmllmx's user avatar
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3 answers
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Plural of "Director and Vice President"

There is a position in a company, "Director and Vice President". If two people are in this position, are they: Director and Vice Presidents or Directors and Vice Presidents?
Steven Brown's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
2k views

Is the phrase "source code" intrinsically plural? [closed]

If we're talking about the phrase "source code", isn't that naturally and implicitly plural? Consider the following sentence: All of the source code for this project is in a public GitHub ...
David Pine's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
926 views

Number of undos? One undo - Many undos?

I'm creating an Andriod app/game. There you do moves and I'm counting the number of moves that's done. Then it is also possible to undo one or many moves. What would you call it when counting the ...
Ola Ström's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
109 views

What do you call this example (I'd describe it as an "implied singular")? [duplicate]

Take this sentence I found: "Too many services enabled on the firewall and switches leave an organization susceptible to compromised security." I think "leaves" is appropriate ...
Doug G's user avatar
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0 answers
25 views

Data don't lie or Data doesn't lie? [duplicate]

Which form is more appropriate and why? Data don't lie or Data doesn't lie
Andrea Ciufo's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
40 views

How to use is and are in a sentence [closed]

Which of the following is correct: The price to pay for these favors is souls The price to pay for these favors are souls
Shaz's user avatar
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0 answers
64 views

Pluralization of Latin origin words

I heard that words borrowed from Latin take irregular plural form. (examples: datum/data, fungus/fungi, alga/algae) But how can we tell that whether a word (such as 'bus', 'plum', or 'idea') has Latin ...
Thunderweb's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
49 views

What's right way to talk about garlands? [closed]

'Tis the season, and garlands are cropping up in discussions. As you notice in that sentence, I pluralized the word "garland". If I were referring to a single instance, such as one strand ...
Alex Beals's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
100 views

What is the plural form of German 'Sturm und Drang'?

Yesterday I encountered the artistic term 'Sturm und Drang' (roughly: storm and stress), a term that describes the literary and artistic movement influenced by Rousseau. It has also been co-opted in ...
smashing_syntax's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
1k views

Do "elision" and "ratatouille" have unmarked plural forms?

According to Microsoft® Encarta® 2009, the word elision has an unmarked plural elision (no -s suffix) as an alternative to elisions. Can "elision" be used as a plural form? If so, is it due ...
GJC's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
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Multiple units of a singular shelf... If I refer to the group of units, should I use "shelfs" or "shelves" [closed]

I have multiple packages with a single shelf inside. If I refer to the multiple packages using some form or variation of "shelf" instead of "packages", should I use "shelfs&...
radar33's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
169 views

What is the correct plural of Lord/Lady justice? [closed]

Members of the Court of Appeal of England & Wales, and the Court of Appeal for Northern Ireland are styled Lord (or Lady) Justice. What is the correct plural? In American and Canadian English, one ...
lordsjusticesmaybe's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
40 views

The Miss(es) Joneses

Fowler reads The Misses Jones is the old-fashioned plural, occasionally used when formality is required, e.g. in printed lists of guests present, etc.; otherwise the type the Miss Joneses is now ...
GJC's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
162 views

In Scottish English are all plurals after an "s" sound pronounced as "-seez"?

In English I'm accustomed to the incorrect irregular plural pronunciation used by many educated speakers for the words "processes" and "biases" to end in /siːz/ instead of /səz/ ...
hippietrail's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
78 views

Extremely fast shipping time

Which sentence is grammatically correct: "We can provide extremely fast shipping times" "We can provide extremely fast shipping time" I was arguing the first was correct because ...
Dane Jordan's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
50 views

Analogue to appending "s" to the end of an acronym when plural does not have an "s" [duplicate]

Some acronyms can be naturally pluralized. For example, consider the acronym RTP which stands for regional tax policy -- the plural is regional tax policies and thus the acronym can be written as RTPs....
Erik M's user avatar
  • 109
-1 votes
1 answer
53 views

If one presidential term is four years, how do you say two terms in terms of years? Two four years's?

If one presidential term is four years, how do you say two terms in terms of years? Two four years's? Two four years doesn't make a lot of sense but two four years's sounds weird.
Albert Sun's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
187 views

How to suggest plurality of a generic word?

There is a basket of oranges kept in the middle of the room. A child comes in and kicks it. I want to describe the action but want to use the generic "fruit(s)" in the sentence. It does not ...
user96551's user avatar
  • 1,444
6 votes
1 answer
324 views

Plural of "beef Wellington"

A colleague asked: what is the plural of "beef Wellington"? (In response to a few comments, I recognise that I am unlikely to be misunderstood in a restaurant no matter how I order ...
LSpice's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
62 views

One troop full of troops? [closed]

A troop is a group of soldiers but when they say 32,000 troops they mean 32,000 soldiers, not 32,000 groups of soldiers. But one soldier is never referred to as one troop. What's up with that?
mattz's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
164 views

few/little/some software (in plural) [duplicate]

I would like to say: Available calculation methods are limited to few software. With "few", I mean 3 programs. However, "software" is an uncountable noun. "Some" and &...
st4co4's user avatar
  • 269
0 votes
1 answer
31 views

Objectives for Plural Subjects

Please have a look at the following example. The shops on the high street see a customer drop. The shops on the high street see customer drops. Which one is grammatically correct? Thanks.
Kevin's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
204 views

Why did "species" take over the singular?

As far as I know, it is very rare to have a noun in English that is both singular and plural and ends with "s". But "species" is such a noun, and I was surprised to learn that it ...
user21820's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
30 views

Pluralization of "XX Second Delay"

There is an app that I recently used that had music playback functionality. Among other things, one of the features it provided was that I was able to adjust the speed of the lyrics using two buttons. ...
Nicholas's user avatar
  • 229
8 votes
4 answers
2k views

English plural of "conundrum"

A Physics.SE question had me reading up on D-branes on Wikipedia, where I found the following sentence in the section on black holes: The concept of black hole entropy poses some interesting conundra....
Rivers McForge's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
154 views

How to add a possessive to a plural that doesn't follow the "add s" rule?

Let us say that I want to talk about the houses that are collectively owned by a set of mice. The phrase "the mice houses" doesn't make sense to me, but "the mice's houses" also ...
Michael Stachowsky's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
22 views

Plural or singular subject-verb agreement [duplicate]

My question is in regards to the sentence below: Take advantage of free editing tools like Grammarly, which helps pinpoint small typos, or Hemmingway App, which shows you how to increase readability. ...
TravelingPen's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
257 views

Can I use shoes as a collective noun as singular?

The only thing I can wear is my shoes. Can I use shoes as a collective noun in singular, as in the example?
Evgeniia's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
5k views

Why isn't "giraves" the plural of "giraffe" like "wolves" is for "wolf"? [duplicate]

The plural of giraffe, according to Merriam Webster and some other dictionaries I checked, is "giraffes". Normally when the final sound of an English word is F, its plural ends in V sound. ...
user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
395 views

Can the word "fruit" be used as an invariant plural as in "the fruit are" and "two fruit"? [duplicate]

Background: Over here on this forum for English speakers learning Chinese, there is debate on which ones among the following are correct English: the fruit is the fruits are the fruit are *? Other ...
hippietrail's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
569 views

Why is "learnings" considered acceptable? [closed]

In 2020, within Australia, the term "learnings" has become very in-vogue within the media and political set. But why is the noun learnings considered acceptable English, at all? 'Learnings ...
Axel's user avatar
  • 41
0 votes
0 answers
23 views

The military uses robots? Or the military use robots?

Some comments: I use robots. You use robots. The people use robots. Everybody uses robots. The school uses robots, but schools use robots. So perhaps the military uses robots. I saw a previous thread ...
David DuVal's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
381 views

Is there a term for a compound word such as Sergeant Major, which plural form doesn't modify the last word?

Born out of a lighthearted comment I made earlier today, stating that the plural form of Mini Cooper would be Minis Cooper, I've been curious if there is a specific name for this type of plural. My ...
McFuu's user avatar
  • 111
-1 votes
2 answers
418 views

English nouns whose plural form differs from singular

The singular of people is person. For example, if there are three people in a room, you would refer to one of them as a person. There other English nouns of this type, e.g. cattle vs cow/bull. Is ...
Phil Freedenberg's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
104 views

"Series" – a noun of multitude similar to "lot", "majority", "percentage", "proportion"– verb agreement

According to Garner's fourth edition Though serving as a plural when the need arises, series is ordinarily a singular noun. But it is also a noun of multitude, so that phrases such as a series of ...
GJC's user avatar
  • 2,433
1 vote
2 answers
46k views

Is it "men's" or "mens'"? And what's the rule? [duplicate]

Why is it that men's eyes always drift toward females? I mean, "men" is the plural form of "man". So it's "mens'"... but it looks very strange, and maybe this only ...
P. Campese's user avatar
-1 votes
2 answers
72 views

Six foot tall, a herd of elephant: special use of the singular in certain syntactic contexts

CambridgeGEL, page 1588 reads Examples like She’s six foot tall involve a special use of the singular form rather than a base plural: the difference between this and How many feet are there in a mile?...
GJC's user avatar
  • 2,433
2 votes
2 answers
429 views

Why is seraphim a plural of seraph? [closed]

This pluralization pattern is highly unlike those I found in English, such as those ending in -(e)s and ones that were technically borrowed from Latin and Greek, thus following different patterns that ...
Eric Velazquez's user avatar
12 votes
4 answers
4k views

Why is stigmata a plural of stigma?

When I first looked this word up on Dictionary.com, I found entries not for it, but instead stigma. I was baffled. Words in the English language usually follow the -(e)s pluralization pattern, but why ...
Eric Velazquez's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

What is the proper written plural possessive form for nouns that do not take -s, -es, or -ses upon pluralisation?

For most English words, the rules for construction of possessive forms are fairly simple. Singular nouns are possessivised by adding -’s to the end (even if the word already ends with an S):1 cat → ...
Vikki's user avatar
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