It was originally plural, but in French and English it is always regarded as singular. However, in more specific contexts, the plural form can also be Is e.g. The plural of 'was' is 'were'Example: I was here. Likewise, acronyms and initialisms are normally pluralized simply by adding (lowercase) -s, as in MPs, although the apostrophe is sometimes seen. 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. 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). 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 /ænˈtɛni/. Create an account and sign in to access this FREE content, "Data" is the Latin plural form of "datum.". The plural morpheme in English is suffixed to the end of most nouns. (Some of these are Greek rather than Latin words, but the method of plural formation in English is the same.) ("following lines/pages"), hh. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form: Where a singular noun ends in a sibilant sound— /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ —the plural is formed by adding /ɪz/ or /əz/ (in some transcription systems, this is abbreviated as /ᵻz/). The plural (sometimes abbreviated PL), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number.Plurals of nouns typically denote a quantity other than the default quantity represented by a noun, which is generally one (the form that represents this default quantity is said to be of singular number). The emphasis here is upon the term "existences," and in its plural form. plural definition: 1. a word or form that expresses more than one: 2. consisting of lots of different races or types…. So, for all other words (i.e. Phases was once the plural of phasis, but the singular is now phase. Some nouns have identical singular and plural (zero inflection). Any quantity that includes decimal precision is plural. 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. 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". In seeing myself in Florence, there was an opportunity to see my selves (yes, Post the Definition of plural to Facebook, Share the Definition of plural on Twitter. For it the plural is ( They) but not its or it's. Dictionary.com Unabridged For more information, see English phonology. Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. For example, in Spanish, nouns composed of a verb and its plural object usually have the verb first and noun object last (e.g. Only the following three are commonly found: As noted, the word "children" comes from an earlier form "childer". A particular set of nouns, describing things having two parts, comprises the major group of pluralia tantum in modern English: These words are interchangeable with a pair of scissors, a pair of trousers, and so forth. more than one in number; a plural word or form: (in) the form of a word which expresses more than one. 'All Intensive Purposes' or 'All Intents and Purposes'? The noun I can be countable or uncountable.. For the (especially British) treatment of teams as plural even if they have singular names, see § Singulars with collective meaning treated as plural above. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Our new online dictionaries for schools provide a safe and appropriate environment for children. Its tail is long. 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. Some words have irregular plurals that do not fit any of the types given here. Mazel Tov, Arvind! 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 § Irregular plurals from other languages below. Why is it "Socrates' Deathbed" but "Dickens's Novels"? ("volumes"). At present, however, kudo is considered an error, though the usage is becoming more common[citation needed] as kudos becomes better known. linguistics: Linguistics is the study of language. Other pluralia tantum remain unchanged as adjectives. The plural form of a word is the form that is used when referring to more than one person or thing. Referring to the musical style as a whole. ( Its) means possessive. There are some nouns that are irregular. 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 Italianate pronunciation. Usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic, hypercorrective, or incorrect. Italian nouns, notably technical terms in music and art, often retain the Italian plurals: Nouns from languages other than the above generally form plurals as if they were native English words: Unlike other compounds borrowed directly from French. What Are All Of The Different Ways To Pluralize “You”? Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? 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[clarification needed]. (This does not always apply; for example, there is the Minnesota Lynx, not *Lynxes.) All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. The plural of mongoose is mongooses. Plural number is used when There were formerly a few other words like this: eyre/eyren (eggs), lamber/lambren (lambs), and calver/calveren (calves). 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". 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). 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. Some examples: Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. Many English compounds have been borrowed directly from French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. The 11th edition of the standard Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2006) lists film noirs as the preferred style. Last 50 years Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Mongeese is a back-formation by mistaken analogy to goose / geese and is often used in a jocular context. The plurals of a few nouns are formed from the singular by adding -n or -en, stemming from the Old English weak declension. How English plurals are formed; typically -(e)s, Singulars as plural and plurals as singular, Plural in form but singular in construction, Singulars with collective meaning treated as plural. or It is standard meaning the form of money, where it derives from the Latin singular ablative in the phrase in specie. 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 the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicised forms when these are more common. Context always helps. 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. What to Know. 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. 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 pantalon) was originally singular. [24] 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. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'plural.'. 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.