English plurals

English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns.

Phonological transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American. For more information, see English phonology.

Meaning

Although the everyday meaning of ''plural'' is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one". This less-than aspect can be seen in cases like ''the temperature is zero degrees'' (not *''zero degree'') and ''0.5 children per woman'' (not *''0.5 child per woman'').

Form

Regular plurals

The plural morpheme in English is a sibilant suffixed to the end of most nouns. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form:

Any sibilant

In English, there are six sibilant consonants, namely . Where a singular noun ends in a sibilant sound, the plural is formed by adding or (in some transcription systems, this is abbreviated as ). The spelling adds ''-es'', or ''-s'' if the singular already ends in ''-e'':

Other voiceless consonants

In most English varieties, there are five non-sibilant voiceless consonants that occur at the end of words, namely ; some varieties also have . When the singular form ends in a voiceless consonant other than a sibilant, the plural is normally formed by adding (a voiceless sibilant). The spelling adds ''-s'':

Some that end in , however, are "near-regular". See section below.

Other voiced phonemes

For a singular noun ending on a non-sibilant voiced consonant, the plural adds (a voiced sibilant) and the spelling adds ''-s'':

In English, all vowels are voiced. Nouns ending in a vowel sound similarly add to form the plural. The spelling usually adds ''-s'', but certain instances (detailed below) may add ''-es'' instead:

=Plurals of nouns in ''-o'' preceded by a consonant

=
Singular nouns ending in ''o'' preceded by a consonant in many cases spell the plural by adding ''-es'' (pronounced ):

However many nouns of foreign origin, including almost all Italian loanwords, add only ''-s'':

Plurals of nouns in ''-y''

Nouns ending in a vocalic ''y'' (that is, used as a vowel) preceded by a consonant usually drop the ''y'' and add ''-ies'' (pronounced , or in words where the y is pronounced ):

Words ending in ''quy'' also follow this pattern, since in English ''qu'' is a digraph for two consonant sounds () or sometimes one ():

However, proper nouns (particularly names of people) of this type usually form their plurals by simply adding ''-s'': ''the two Kennedys'', ''there are three Harrys in our office''. With place names this rule is not always adhered to: '' Sicilies'' and '' Scillies'' are the standard plurals of ''Sicily'' and ''Scilly'', while ''Germanys'' and ''Germanies'' are both used.' Nor does the rule apply to words that are merely capitalized common nouns: ''P&O Ferries'' (from ''ferry'').

Other exceptions include ''lay-bys'' and ''stand-bys''.

Words ending in a ''y'' preceded by a vowel form their plurals by adding ''-s'':

However the plural form (rarely used) of ''money'' is usually ''monies'', although ''moneys'' is also found. Also, the plural of ''trolley'' can be either ''trolleys'' or ''trollies'', although the former is more common.

Plurals of nouns in ''-i''

Nouns written with ''-i'' usually have plurals in ''-is'' but some in ''-ies'' are also found.

Near-regular plurals

In Old and Middle English, voiceless fricatives and mutated to voiced fricatives /v/ and /ð/ respectively before a voiced ending.

In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of changing to , the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent ''e'' is added in this case if the singular does not already end with ''-e'':

In addition, there is one word where is voiced in the plural:

Many nouns ending in or (including all words where is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:

Some can do either:

Irregular plurals

There are many other less regular ways of forming plurals, usually stemming from older forms of English or from foreign borrowings.

Nouns with identical singular and plural

Some nouns have identical singular and plural (zero inflection). Many of these are the names of animals:
*''bison''
*''buffalo'' (or ''buffaloes'')
*''carp''
*''cod''
*''deer'' (and all species in the deer family such as '' moose'' and ''elk'')
*''fish'' (or ''fishes'')
*''kakapo'' (and other Māori-derived words)
*''neat''
*''pike''
*''salmon''
*''sheep''
*''shrimp'' or ''shrimps'' (British)
*''squid''
*''trout''
As a general rule, game or other animals are often referred to in the singular for the plural in a sporting context: "He shot six brace of pheasant", "Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year", whereas in another context such as zoology or tourism the regular plural would be used. Eric Partridge refers to these sporting terms as "snob plurals" and conjectures that they may have developed by analogy with the common English irregular plural animal words "deer", "sheep" and "trout". Similarly, nearly all kinds of fish have no separate plural form (though there are exceptions—such as rays, sharks or lampreys). As to the word ''fish'' itself, the plural is usually identical to the singular, although ''fishes'' is sometimes used, especially when meaning "species of fish". ''Fishes'' is also used in iconic contexts, such as the Bible story of the loaves and fishes, or the reference in ''The Godfather'', "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." The plural of the names of fishes either takes the ending -s or is the same as the singular.

Other nouns that have identical singular and plural forms include:

*''craft'' (meaning 'vessel'), including ''aircraft'', '' watercraft'', '' spacecraft'', ''hovercraft'' (but in the sense of a skill or art, the plural is regular, ''crafts'')
*''blues'' (referring to individual songs in the blues musical style: "play me a blues"; "he sang three blues and a calypso")
*''cannon'' (''cannons'' is more common in North America and Australia, while ''cannon'' as plural is more common in the United Kingdom.)
*''chassis'' (only the spelling is identical; the singular is pronounced while the plural is )
*''counsel'' (in the meaning of ''lawyer'')
*''head'' (referring, in the plural, to animals in a herd: "fifty head of cattle": cf ''brace'' above)
*''iris'' (usually ''irises'', but ''iris'' can be the plural for multiple plants; in medical contexts ''irides'' is used, see below)
*''series'', ''species'' (and other words in ''-ies'', from the Latin fifth declension) he word ''specie'' refers only to money, coins, from the Latin ablative singular form in the phrase ''in specie''. It has no plural form.*''stone''—as a unit of weight equal to 14 pounds (occasionally stones)

Many names for Native American peoples are not inflected in the plural:
*''Cherokee''
*''Cree''
*''Comanche''
*''Delaware''
*''Hopi''
*''Iroquois''
*''Kiowa''
*''Navajo''
*''Ojibwa''
*''Sioux''
*''Zuni''

Exceptions include ''Algonquins'', ''Apaches'', ''Aztecs'', ''Chippewas'', ''Hurons'', ''Incas'', ''Mohawks'', ''Oneidas'', and ''Seminoles''.

English sometimes distinguishes between regular plural forms of demonyms/ethnonyms (e.g. "five Dutchmen", "several Irishmen"), and uncountable plurals used to refer to entire nationalities collectively (e.g. "the Dutch", "the Irish").

Certain other words borrowed from foreign languages such as Japanese and Māori are "correctly" not inflected in the plural, although many people are not aware of this rule; see below.

Plurals in ''-(e)n''

The plurals of a few nouns are formed from the singular by adding ''-n'' or ''-en'', stemming from the Old English weak declension. Only the following three are commonly found:

As noted, the word "children" comes from an earlier form "childer". There were formerly a few other words like this: eyre/eyren (eggs), lamber/lambren (lambs), and calver/calveren (calves).

The following ''-(e)n'' plurals are found in dialectal, rare, or archaic usage:

The word ''box'', referring to a computer, is occasionally pluralized humorously to ''boxen'' in the hacker subculture. In the same context, multiple VAX computers are sometimes called ''Vaxen'' particularly if operating as a cluster, but multiple Unix systems are usually ''Unices'' along the Latin model.

Apophonic plurals

The plural is sometimes formed by simply changing the vowel sound of the singular (these are sometimes called ''mutated plurals''):

This group consists of words that historically belong to the Old English consonant declension, see . There are many compounds of ''man'' and ''woman'' that form their plurals in the same way: ''postmen'', ''policewomen'', etc.

The plural of ''mongoose'' is ''mongooses'' or sometimes ''mongeese''. ''Mongeese'' is a back-formation by analogy to ''goose'' / ''geese'' and is often used in a jocular context. The form ''meese'' is sometimes also used humorously as the plural of ''moose''—normally ''moose'' or ''mooses''—or even of ''mouse''.

Miscellaneous irregular plurals

Some words have irregular plurals that do not fit any of the types given here.
*''person''—''people'' (also ''persons'', in more formal - legal and technical - contexts; ''people'' can also be a singular noun with plural ''peoples''.)
*''die''—''dice'' (in the context of gaming, where ''dice'' is also often used as the singular; and also in the semiconductor industry; otherwise ''dies'' is used)
*''penny''—''pence'' (in the context of an amount of money in sterling). The 1p or 1-cent coins are called ''pennies''. ''Pence'' is abbreviated ''p'' (also in speech, as "pee"). For ''10 pences'' see below.

Irregular plurals from foreign languages

=Irregular plurals from Latin and Greek

=

English has borrowed a great many words from Classical Latin and Classical Greek. Classical Latin has a very complex system of endings in which there are five categories or declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns (some with sub-categories). Usually, in borrowing words from Latin, the endings of the nominative are used: nouns whose nominative singular ends in ''-a'' (first declension) have plurals in ''-ae'' (''anima'', ''animae''); nouns whose nominative singular ends in ''-m'' (second declension neuter) have plurals in ''-a'' (''stadium'', ''stadia''; ''datum'', ''data''). (For a full treatment, see Latin declensions.)

Classical Greek has a simpler system, but still more complicated than that of English. Note that most loan words from Greek in English are from Attic Greek (the Athenian Greek of Plato, Aristotle, and other great writers), not Demotic Greek, Koine (Biblical) Greek, or Modern Greek. This is because Attic Greek is what is taught in classes in Greek in Western Europe, and therefore was the Greek that the word borrowers knew.

Anglicisation

The general trend with loanwords is toward what is called ''Anglicisation'' or ''naturalisation'', that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns have settled on, or acquired a modern form from the original (usually Latin). Other nouns have become Anglicised, taking on the normal "s" ending. In some cases, both forms are still competing.

The choice of a form can often depend on context: for a scholar, the plural of ''appendix'' is ''appendices'' (following the original language); for some physicians, the plural of ''appendix'' is ''appendixes''. Likewise, a radio or radar engineer works with ''antennas'', but an entomologist deals with ''antennae''. The choice of form can also depend on the level of discourse: traditional Latin plurals are found more often in academic and scientific contexts, whereas in daily speech the Anglicised forms are more common. In the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicised forms when these are more common.

Different paradigms of Latin pronunciation can lead to confusion as to the number or gender of the noun in question. As traditionally used in English, including scientific, medical, and legal contexts, Latin nouns retain the classical inflection with regard to spelling; however those inflections use an Anglicised pronunciation: the entomologist pronounces ''antennae'' as . This may cause confusion for those familiar with the Classical Latin pronunciation . The words ''alumni'' (masculine plural) and ''alumnae'' (feminine plural) are notorious in this regard, as ''alumni'' in Anglicised pronunciation sounds the same as ''alumnae'' in Classical Latin pronunciation.

Because many of these plurals do not end in ''-s'', some of them have been reinterpreted as singular forms: particularly the words ''datum'' and ''medium'' (as in a "medium of communication"), where the original plurals ''data'' and ''media'' are now, in many contexts, used by some as singular mass nouns: "The media is biased"; "This data shows us that ..." (although a number of scientists, especially of British origin, still say "These data show us that ..."). See below for more information. Similarly, words such as ''criteria'' and ''phenomena'' are used as singular by some speakers, although this is still considered incorrect in standard usage (see below).

Final ''-a'' becomes ''-ae'' (also ''-æ''), or just adds ''-s'':

Scientific abbreviations for words of Latin origin ending in ''-a'', such as ''SN'' for ''supernova'', can form a plural by adding ''-e'', as ''SNe'' for ''supernovae''.

Final ''-ex'' or ''-ix'' becomes ''-ices'' (pronounced ), or just adds ''-es'':

Final ''-is'' becomes ''-es'' (pronounced ) or ''-ises/-ides'':

Except for words derived from Greek , which become (pronounced or ):

(Some of these are Greek rather than Latin words, but the method of plural formation in English is the same.) Some people treat ''process'' as if it belonged to this class, pronouncing ''processes'' instead of standard . Since the word comes from Latin , whose plural in the fourth declension is with a long ''u'', this pronunciation is by analogy, not etymology. ''Axes'' , the plural of ''axis'', is pronounced differently from ''axes'' , the plural of ''ax(e)''.

Final ''-ies'' remains unchanged:

''Specie'' for a singular of ''species'' is considered nonstandard. It is standard meaning the form of money, where it derives from the Latin singular ablative in the phrase ''in specie''.

Final ''-um'' becomes ''-a'', or just adds ''-s'':

Final ''-us'' becomes ''-i'' (second declension, ) or ''-era'' or ''-ora'' ( third declension), or just adds ''-es'' (especially for fourth declension words, where the Latin plural was similar to the singular):

Final ''-us'' remains unchanged in the plural (fourth declension—the plural has a long ū to differentiate it from the singular short u):

Colloquial usages based in a humorous fashion on the second declension include ''Elvii'' (better Latin would be ''Elvēs'' or Elvidēs) to refer to multiple Elvis impersonators, and ''Loti'', used by petrolheads to refer to Lotus automobiles in the plural.

Some Greek plurals are preserved in English (''cf.'' Plurals of words of Greek origin):

Final ''-on'' becomes ''-a'':

Final ''-as'' in one case changes to ''-antes'':

Final ''-ma'' in nouns of Greek origin can become ''-mata'', although ''-s'' is usually also acceptable, and in many cases more common.

Such ''-ata'' plurals also occur in Latin words borrowed from Greek, e.g. ''poemata''. The ''a'' is short in both languages.

= Irregular plurals from other languages

=
Some nouns of French origin add an ''-x'', which may be silent or pronounced :

See also below.

Italian nouns, notably technical terms in music and art, often retain the Italian plurals:

Foreign terms may take native plural forms, especially when the user is addressing an audience familiar with the language. In such cases, the conventionally formed English plural may sound awkward or be confusing.

Nouns of Slavic origin add ''-a'' or ''-i'' according to native rules, or just ''-s'':

Nouns of Hebrew origin add ''-im'' or ''-ot'' (generally m/f) according to native rules, or just ''-s'':

''-ot'' is pronounced ''os'' (with unvoiced ''s'') in the Ashkenazi dialect.

Many nouns of Japanese origin have no plural form and do not change:

Other nouns such as ''kimonos'', ''ninjas'', ''futons'', and ''tsunamis'' are more often seen with a regular English plural.

In New Zealand English, nouns of Māori origin can either take an ''-s'' or have no separate plural form. Words more connected to Māori culture and used in that context tend to retain the same form, while names of flora and fauna may or may not take an ''-s'', depending on context. Many regard omission as more correct:

Notes:

Some words borrowed from Inuktitut and related languages spoken by the Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, retain the original plurals. The word ''Inuit'' itself is the plural form. Canadian English also borrows Inuktitut singular ''Inuk'', which is uncommon in English outside Canada.

Nouns from languages other than the above generally form plurals as if they were native English words:

Plurals of compound nouns

The majority of English compound nouns have one basic term, or head, with which they end. These are nouns and are pluralized in typical fashion:

Some compounds have one head with which they begin. These heads are also nouns and the head usually pluralizes, leaving the second, usually a post-positive adjective, term unchanged:

It is common in informal speech to pluralize the last word instead, like most English nouns, but in edited prose aimed at educated people, the forms given above are usually preferred.

If a compound can be thought to have two heads, both of them tend to be pluralized when the first head has an irregular plural form:

Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head:

In military and naval usage, the terms ''general'', ''colonel'', and ''commander'', as part of an officer's title, are etymologically adjectives, but they have been adopted as nouns and are thus heads, so compound titles employing them are pluralized at the end:

For compounds of three or more words that have a head (or a term functioning as a head) with an irregular plural form, only that term is pluralized:

For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front—especially in cases where the compound is ''ad hoc'' or the head is metaphorical—it is generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last (if open when singular, such compounds tend to take hyphens when plural in the latter case):

With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g. ''heads of state''):

In some extended compounds constructed around ''o'', only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural):

See also the Headless nouns section below.

French compounds

Many English compounds have been borrowed directly from French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. In French loaned compounds with a noun as head and a qualifying adjective, it is correct to pluralize both words, in common with French practice. Usually in French, the noun precedes the adjective:

In some expressions, the adjective precedes the noun, in which case it is still correct to pluralize both words, in common with French practice, although in the English form sometimes only the noun is pluralized:

However, if the adjectives ''beau'' "beautiful/handsome", ''nouveau'' "new", or ''vieux'' "old" precede a singular noun beginning with a vowel or a mute ''h'' (such as ''homme''), they are changed to ''bel'' (as in the example below), ''nouvel'', or ''vieil'' (to facilitate pronunciation in French). In these cases, both the noun and the adjective are pluralized in the English form as in French:

In other French compound expressions, only the head noun is pluralized:

''but'':

Plurals of letters and abbreviations

The plural of individual letters is usually written with ''-'s'': ''there are two h's in this sentence''; ''mind your p's and q's''; ''dot the i's and cross the t's''.

Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of ''but's''"). However others prefer to avoid this method (which can lead to confusion with the possessive ''-'s''), and write ''1990s'', ''buts''; this is the style recommended by ''The Chicago Manual of Style''.

Likewise, acronyms and initialisms are normally pluralized simply by adding (lowercase) ''-s'', as in ''MPs'', although the apostrophe is sometimes seen. Use of the apostrophe is more common in those cases where the letters are followed by periods (''B.A.'s''), or where the last letter is S (as in ''PS's'' and ''CAS's'', although ''PSs'' and ''CASs'' are also acceptable; the ending ''-es'' is also sometimes seen).

English (like Latin and certain other European languages) can form a plural of certain one-letter abbreviations by doubling the letter: p. ("page"), pp. ("pages"). Other examples include ll. ("lines"), ff. ("following lines/pages"), hh. ("hands", as a measure), PP. ("Popes"), SS. ("Saints"), ss. (or §§) ("sections"), vv. ("volumes"). Some multi-letter abbreviations can be treated the same way, by doubling the final letter: MS ("manuscript"), MSS ("manuscripts"); op. ("opus"), opp. ("opera" as plural of opus).

However, often the abbreviation used for the singular is used also as the abbreviation for the plural; this is normal for most units of measurement and currency. The SI unit symbols are officially not considered abbreviations and not pluralized, as in 10 m ("10 metres").

Headless nouns

In '' The Language Instinct'', linguist Steven Pinker discusses what he calls "headless words", typically bahuvrihi compounds, such as ''lowlife'' and ''flatfoot'', in which ''life'' and ''foot'' are not heads semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, and a flatfoot is not a type of foot. When the common form of such a word is singular, it is treated as if it has a regular plural, even if the final constituent of the word is usually pluralized in an irregular fashion. Thus the plural of ''lowlife'' is ''lowlifes'', not "lowlives", according to Pinker. Other proposed examples include:

An exception is ''Blackfoot'', of which the plural can be ''Blackfeet'', though that form of the name is officially rejected by the Blackfoot First Nations of Canada.

Another analogous case is that of sport team names such as the Miami Marlins and Toronto Maple Leafs. For these, see below.

Defective nouns

Plurals without singulars

Some nouns have no singular form. Such a noun is called a . Examples include ''cattle'', ''thanks'', ''clothes'' (originally a plural of ''cloth'').

A particular set of nouns, describing things having two parts, comprises the major group of in modern English:

*glasses (a pair of spectacles), pants, panties, pantyhose, pliers, scissors, shorts, suspenders, tongs (metalworking & cooking), trousers, etc.

These words are interchangeable with ''a pair of scissors'', ''a pair of trousers'', and so forth. In the American fashion industry it is common to refer to a single pair of pants as a ''pant''—though this is a back-formation, the English word (deriving from the French ) was originally singular. In the same field, one half of a pair of scissors separated from the other half is, rather illogically, referred to as a ''half-scissor''. ''Tweezers'' used to be part of this group, but ''tweezer'' has come into common usage since the second half of the 20th century.

Nouns describing things having two parts are expressed in the singular when used as adjectives. Other ' remain unchanged as adjectives.

There are also some plural nouns whose singular forms exist, though they are much more rarely encountered than the plurals:

Notes:

Singulars without plurals

Mass nouns (or uncountable nouns) do not represent distinct objects, so the singular and plural semantics do not apply in the same way. Some examples:
* Abstract nouns: deceit, information, cunning, and nouns derived from adjectives, such as honesty, wisdom, beauty, intelligence, poverty, stupidity, curiosity, and words ending with " -ness", such as goodness, freshness, laziness, and nouns which are homonyms of adjectives with a similar meaning, such as good, bad (can also use goodness and badness), hot, and cold.
* In the arts and sciences: chemistry, geometry, surgery, the blues,Referring to the musical style as a whole. jazz, rock and roll, impressionism, surrealism. This includes those that look plural but function as grammatically singular in English, e.g., "Mathematics ''is'' fun" and "thermodynamics ''is'' the science of heat": mathematics (and in British English the shortened form 'maths'), physics, mechanics, dynamics, statics, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, electronics, hydrodynamics, robotics, acoustics, optics, computer graphics, ethics, linguistics, etc.
* Chemical elements and other physical entities:: aluminum (U.S.) / aluminium (U.K.), copper, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, equipment, furniture, traffic, air and water

Notes:

Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. For example, when someone has two ''grains of sand'', they do not have ''two sands'', but ''sand''. However, there could be the many "sands of Africa": either many distinct stretches of sand, or distinct types of sand of interest to geologists or builders, or simply the allusive '' The Sands of Mars''.

It is rare to pluralize ''furniture'' in this way (though it was formerly more common) and ''information'' is never pluralized.

There are several isotopes of oxygen, which might be referred to as different oxygens. In casual speech, ''oxygen'' might be used as shorthand for "an oxygen atom", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so one can refer to "multiple oxygens in the same molecule".

One would interpret "Bob's ''wisdoms''" as "various pieces of Bob's wisdom" (that is, "don't run with scissors", "defer to those with greater knowledge"), ''deceits'' as a series of instances of deceitful behaviour (lied on income tax, dated my wife), and the different ''idlenesses'' of the worker as plural distinct manifestations of the mass concept of idleness (or as different types of idleness, "bone lazy" versus "no work to do").

The pair ''specie'' and ''species'' both come from a Latin word meaning "kind", but they do not form a singular-plural pair. In Latin, ''specie'' is the ablative singular form, while ''species'' is the nominative form, which happens to be the same in both singular and plural. In English, ''species'' behaves similarly—as a noun with identical singular and plural—while ''specie'' is treated as a mass noun, referring to money in the form of coins (the idea is of " aymentin kind").

Singulars as plural and plurals as singular

Plural words becoming singular

=Plural in form but singular in construction

=
Certain words which were originally plural in form have come to be used almost exclusively as singulars (usually uncountable); for example ''billiards'', ''measles'', ''news'', ''mathematics'', ''physics'', etc. Some of these words, such as ''news'', are strongly and consistently felt as singular by fluent speakers. These words are usually marked in dictionaries with the phrase "plural in form but singular in construction" (or similar wording). Others, such as ''aesthetics'', are less strongly or consistently felt as singular; for the latter type, the dictionary phrase "plural in form but singular or plural in construction" recognizes variable usage.

=Plural form became a singular form

=
Some words of foreign origin are much better known in their (foreign-morphology) plural form, and are often not even recognized by English speakers as having plural form; descriptively, in English morphology many of these simply are not in plural form, because English has naturalized the foreign plural as the English singular. Usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic, hypercorrective, or incorrect. In the examples below, the original plural is now commonly used as a singular, and in some cases a regular English plural (effectively a double plural) has been formed from it.

''Magazine'' was derived from Arabic via French. It was originally plural, but in French and English it is always regarded as singular.

Other words whose plurals are sometimes used as singulars include:

Notes:

Back-formation

Some words have unusually formed singulars and plurals, but develop "normal" singular-plural pairs by back-formation. For example, ''pease'' (modern ''peas'') was in origin a singular with plural ''peasen''. However, ''pease'' came to be analysed as plural by analogy, from which a new singular ''pea'' was formed; the spelling of ''pease'' was also altered accordingly, surviving only in the name of the dish '' pease porridge'' or ''pease pudding''. Similarly, ''termites'' was the three-syllable plural of ''termes''; this singular was lost, however, and the plural form reduced to two syllables. ''Syringe'' is a back-formation from ''syringes'', itself the plural of '' syrinx'', a musical instrument. ''Cherry'' is from Norman French ''cherise''. ''Phases'' was once the plural of ''phasis'', but the singular is now ''phase''. The nonstandard, offensive, and now obsolete ''Chinee'' and ''Portugee'' singulars are back-formations from the standard ''Chinese'' and ''Portuguese''.

''Kudos'' is a singular Greek word meaning praise, but is often taken to be a plural. At present, however, ''kudo'' is considered an error, though the usage is becoming more common as ''kudos'' becomes better known. The name of the Greek sandwich style '' gyros'' is increasingly undergoing a similar transformation.

The term, from Latin, for the main upper arm flexor in the singular is the ''biceps muscle'' (from ''biceps brachii''); however, many English speakers take it to be a plural and refer to the muscle of only one arm, by back-formation, as ''a bicep''. The correct—although very seldom used—Latin plural is ''bicipites''.

The word ''sastrugi'' (hard ridges on deep snow) is of Russian origin and its singular is ''sastruga''; but the imagined Latin-type singular ''sastrugus'' has sometimes been used.

Geographical plurals used as singular

Geographical names may be treated as singular even if they are plural in form, if they are regarded as representing a single entity such as a country: ''The United States is a country in North America'' (similarly with ''the Netherlands'', ''the Philippines'', ''Trinidad and Tobago'', ''the United Nations,'' etc.). However, if the sense is a group of geographical objects, such as islands or mountains, a plural-form name will be treated as plural: ''The Hebrides are a group of islands off the coast of Scotland.''

Singulars with collective meaning treated as plural

Words such as ''army'', ''company'', ''crowd'', ''family'', ''fleet'', ''government'', ''majority'', ''mess'', ''number'', ''pack'', ''party'' and ''team'' may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set composing it. If the latter meaning is intended, the word (though singular in form) may be treated as if it were a plural, in that it may take a plural verb and be replaced with a plural pronoun: (in British English) ''the government are considering their position'' (alternatively ''the government is considering its position''). See synesis.

Thus, as H. W. Fowler describes, in British English they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "''The Cabinet'' is ''divided'' is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and ''The Cabinet'' are ''agreed'' is better, because it takes two or more to agree."Fowler, H. W., ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'', 2nd ed., revised by Sir Ernest Gowers (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 403.

Plurals of numbers

The following rules apply to the plurals of numerical terms such as ''dozen'', ''score'', ''hundred'', ''thousand'', ''million'', and similar:
* When modified by a number, the plural is not inflected, that is, has no ''-s'' added. Hence ''one hundred'', ''two million'', ''four score'', etc. (The resulting quantitative expressions are treated as numbers, in that they can modify nouns directly: ''three dozen eggs'', although ''of'' is used before pronouns or definite noun phrases: ''three dozen of them/of those eggs''.)
* When not modified by a number, the plural takes ''-s'' as usual, and the resulting expression is not a number (it requires ''of'' if modifying a noun): ''I have hundreds'', ''dozens of complaints'', ''the thousands of people affected''.
* When the modifier is a vaguer expression of number, either pattern may be followed: ''several hundred (people)'' or ''several hundreds (of people)''.
* When the word has a specific meaning rather than being a simple expression of quantity, it is pluralized as an ordinary noun: ''Last season he scored eight hundreds'' runs_in_cricket.html" ;"title="run_(cricket).html" ;"title="scores of at least 100 run (cricket)">runs in cricket">run_(cricket).html" ;"title="scores of at least 100 run (cricket)">runs in cricket The same applies to other numbers: ''My phone number consists of three fives and four sixes''.
* Note the expressions ''by the dozen'' etc. (singular); ''in threes'' [=in groups of three] etc. (plural); ''eight sevens are fifty-six'' etc.

Usage and number agreement

Nouns used attributively

Nouns used attributively to qualify other nouns are generally in the singular, even though for example, a ''dog catcher'' catches more than one dog, and a ''department store'' has more than one department. This is true even for some binary nouns where the singular form is not found in isolation, such as a ''trouser mangle'' or the ''scissor kick''. This is also true where the attribute noun is itself qualified with a number, such as a ''twenty-dollar bill'', a ''ten-foot pole'' or a ''two-man tent''. The plural is used for nouns: a ''glasses case'' is for eyeglasses, while a ''glass case'' is made of glass (but compare ''eyeglass case''); also an ''arms race'' versus ''arm wrestling''. The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British English but very rarely in American English: a ''careers advisor'', a ''languages expert''. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: ''women killers'' are women who kill, whereas ''woman killers'' are those who kill women.

The singular and plural forms of loanwords from other languages where countable nouns used attributively are, unlike English, plural and come at the end of the word are sometimes modified when entering English usage. For example, in Spanish, nouns composed of a verb and its plural object usually have the verb first and noun object last (e.g. the legendary monster ''chupacabras'', literally "sucks-goats", or in a more natural English formation "goatsucker") and the plural form of the object noun is retained in both the singular and plural forms of the compound (i.e. singular ''el chupacabras'', plural ''los chupacabras''). However, when entering English, the final s of ''chupacabras'' was treated as a plural of the compound (i.e. the monster) rather than of the object of the verb (i.e. the goats), and so "chupacabra" without an s is the singular in English, even though in Spanish ''chupacabra'' could literally be construed as a creature that sucks only one single goat.

Teams and their members

In the names of sports teams, sometimes a noun will be given a regular plural in ''-s'' even though that noun in normal use has an irregular plural form (a particular case of headless nouns as described above). For example, there are teams called the Miami Marlins and the Toronto Maple Leafs, even though the word '' marlin'' normally has its plural identical to the singular and the plural of ''leaf'' is ''leaves''. (This does not always apply; for example, there is the Minnesota Lynx, not *''Lynxes''.) Some teams use a non-standard plural spelling in their names, such as the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox.

When a sport team's name is plural, the corresponding singular is often used to denote a member of that team; for example a player for the Cincinnati Reds may be referred to as a ''(Cincinnati) Red''. This also applies to the St. Louis Blues ice hockey team, even though it is named after the song the "St. Louis Blues" and thus ''blues'' was originally a singular identical to its plural.

When a team's name is plural in form but cannot be singularized by removing an ''-s'', as in ''Boston Red Sox'', the plural is sometimes used as a singular (a player may be referred to as "a Red Sox"). Oftentimes, the singular "Red Sox" will be pronounced as if it were "Red Sock", even though the spelling suggests otherwise.

When a team's name is singular, as in '' Miami Heat'' and ''Colorado Avalanche'', the same singular word may also sometimes be used to denote a player (''a Heat'', ''an Avalanche''). When referring to more than one player, it is normal to use ''Heat players'' or ''Avalanche players'' (although in the latter case the team's plural-form nickname ''Avs'' is also available).

For the (especially British) treatment of teams as plural even if they have singular names, see above.

Adjectives as collective plurals

Certain adjectives can be used, uninflected, as plurals denoting people of the designated type. For example, ''unemployed'' and ''homeless'' can be used to mean "unemployed people" and "homeless people", as in ''There are two million unemployed.'' Such usage is common with the definite article, to denote people of a certain type generally: ''the unemployed'', ''the homeless''.

This is common with certain nationalities: ''the British'', ''the Dutch'', ''the English'', ''the French'', ''the Irish'', ''the Spanish'', ''the Welsh'', and those where the adjective and noun singular and plural are identical anyway, including ''the Swiss'' and those in ''-ese'' (''the Chinese'' etc.). In the case of most nationalities, however, the plural of the demonym noun is used for this purpose: ''(the) Americans'', ''(the) Poles''. Cases where the adjective formation is possible, but the noun provides a commonly used alternative, include ''the Scottish'' (or more commonly ''(the) Scots''), ''the Danish'' (or ''(the) Danes''), ''the Finnish'' (or ''(the) Finns''), ''the Swedish'' (or ''(the) Swedes'').

The noun is normally used anyway when referring to specific sets of people (''five Frenchmen'', ''a few Spaniards''), although the adjective may be used especially in case of a group of mixed or unspecified sex, if the demonym nouns are gender-specific: ''there were five French'' (or ''French people'') ''in the bar'' (if neither ''Frenchmen'' or ''Frenchwomen'' would be appropriate).

Numerical quantities

In common parlance, ''plural'' simply means "more than one". A quantity of one may sometimes be grammatically inflected as plural.

Decimals are always plural

Any quantity that includes decimal precision is plural. This includes 1 followed by any number of zeros. It is normal to say ''1.0 gallons per flush'', for instance, ''0.6 units'', or ''3.3 children per couple,'' not *''1.0 gallon,'' *''0.6 unit,'' or *''3.3 child per couple.''

Fractions

Fractions are themselves singular or plural depending on the numerator (e.g. ''one eighth'' vs ''two eighths''), and whatever they apply to can be singular or plural (e.g., ''three-quarters of the apple(s)''), depending on whether it refers to a fraction of a single item or many items.

Equivalent to zero is usually plural

Any zero quantity can be plural or singular, though plural is the default. So the following plurals are standard.
* ''We have no bananas.''
* ''We have zero bananas.''
* ''We don't have any bananas.''

However, if it has already been established that one item was in question, one can use ''no'' to deny that such an item exists in the singular:
* ''"Can you pass me the banana on your desk?" "There's no banana on my desk."''

Interrogative pronouns

The interrogative pronouns ''who'' and ''what'' generally take singular agreement, e.g.
* ''Who works there?''
In some cases, a plural verb can be used when the answer is expected to be plural
* ''What have big ears and trunks?''
When followed by a plural predicative complement, a plural verb must be used:
* ''What are the main reasons?''
not
* *''What is the main reasons?''
Following ''which'', a singular verb suggests a singular answer, and a plural verb suggests a plural answer:
* ''Which of these answers is correct?'' (single choice)
* ''Which of these answers are correct?'' (multiple choice)

When asking ''How many?'', plural is standard (e.g. ''How many bananas?'' not *''How many banana?''), even if the expected answer is only one.

See also

* English verbs
* English personal pronouns
* Count noun
* Mass noun
* Singular ''they''

Notes

References

{{Wiktionary, Appendix:English irregular nouns

Plural
Grammatical number