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In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number —that is, singular or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns. For the plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns.
Phonetic transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American.
The plural morpheme in English is suffixed to the end of most nouns. 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 /ɨz/. The spelling adds -es, or -s if the singular already ends in -e:
| kiss | kisses | /ˈkɪsɨz/ |
| phase | phases | /ˈfeɪzɨz/ |
| dish | dishes | /ˈdɪʃɨz/ |
| massage | massages | /məˈsɑːʒɨz/ or /ˈmæsɑːʒɨz/ |
| witch | witches | /ˈwɪtʃɨz/ |
| judge | judges | /ˈdʒʌdʒɨz/ |
When the singular form ends in a voiceless consonant (other than a sibilant) —/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ or /θ/— the plural is formed by adding /s/. The spelling adds -s:
| lap | laps | /læps/ |
| cat | cats | /kæts/ |
| clock | clocks | /klɒks/ |
| cuff | cuffs | /kʌfs/ |
| death | deaths | /dɛθs/ |
For all other words (i.e. words ending in vowels or voiced non-sibilants) the regular plural adds /z/, represented orthographically by -s:
| boy | boys | /bɔɪz/ |
| girl | girls | /ɡɜrlz/ |
| chair | chairs | /tʃɛərz/ |
Morphophonetically, these rules are sufficient to describe most English plurals. However, there are several complications introduced in spelling.
The -oes rule: most nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant also form their plurals by adding -es (pronounced /z/):
| hero | heroes |
| potato | potatoes |
| volcano | volcanoes or volcanos |
The -ies rule: nouns ending in a y preceded by a consonant usually drop the y and add -ies (pronounced /iz/). This is taught to many North American and British students with the mnemonic: "Change the y to i and add es":
| cherry | cherries |
| lady | ladies |
However, proper nouns (particularly those for people or places) ending in a y preceded by a consonant form their plurals regularly:[1][2]
| Germany | Germanys (as in The two Germanys were unified in 1990; this rule is commonly not adhered to as several book titles show;[3][4] Sicilies and Scillies, rather than Sicilys and Scillys, are the standard plurals of Sicily and Scilly.) |
| Harry | Harrys (as in There are three Harrys in our office) |
The rule does not 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 regularly:
| day | days |
| monkey | monkeys |
(Money/Monies is an exception, but money can also form its plural regularly.[5])
Many nouns of foreign origin, including almost all Italian loanwords, are exceptions to the -oes rule:
| canto | cantos |
| homo | homos |
| photo | photos |
| zero | zeros |
| piano | pianos |
| portico | porticos |
| pro | pros |
| quarto (paper size) | quartos |
| kimono | kimonos |
In Old and Middle English voiceless fricatives /f/, /θ/ mutated to voiced fricatives before a voiced ending.[6] In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of /f/ changing to /v/, 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:
| bath | baths | /bɑːðz/, /bæðz/ |
| mouth2 | mouths | /maʊðz/ |
| calf | calves | /kɑːvz/, /kævz/ |
| leaf1 | leaves (see footnote), /liːvz/ | |
| knife2 | knives | /naɪvz/ |
| life | lives |
In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:[6]
| house2 | houses | /haʊzɨz/ |
Many nouns ending in /f/ or /θ/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:
| moth | moths (voiced /mɒðz/ is rare but does occur in New England and Canada) |
| proof | proofs |
Some can do either:
| dwarf3 | dwarfs/dwarves |
| hoof | hoofs/hooves |
| elf | elfs/elves |
| roof | roofs (commonly voiced as /ruːvz/ to rhyme with hooves, but rooves is a rare archaic spelling) |
| staff4 | staffs/staves |
| turf | turfs/turves (latter rare) |
^ Note 1: The Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team is a special case. (See the collective nouns section below.)
^ Note 2: In a Canadian accent, the mutation to a voiced consonant produces a change in the sound of the preceding diphthong (/aʊ/ or /aɪ/).
^ Note 3: For dwarf, the common form of the plural was dwarfs —as, for example, in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs— until J. R. R. Tolkien popularized dwarves; he intended the changed spelling to differentiate the "dwarf" fantasy race in his novels from the cuter and simpler beings common in fairy tales, but his usage has since spread. Multiple astronomical dwarf stars and multiple nonmythological short human beings, however, remain dwarfs.
^ Note 4: For staff (/stæf/ or /stɑːf/) in the sense of "a body of employees", the plural is always staff; otherwise, both staffs and staves (/steɪvz/) are acceptable, except in compounds, such as flagstaffs. Staves is rare in North America except in the sense of "magic rod", or the musical notation tool; stave of a barrel or cask is a back-formation from staves, which is its plural. (See the Plural to singular by back-formation section below.)
There are many other less regular ways of forming plurals, usually stemming from older forms of English or from foreign borrowings.
Some nouns spell their singular and plural exactly alike; some linguists regard these as regular plurals. Many of these are the names of animals:
The plural deers is listed in some dictionaries.[7] 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. Similarly, nearly all kinds of fish have no separate plural form (though there are exceptions -- such as rays, sharks or lampreys). And the word "fish" itself is also troublesome, being generally used as a plural when in the context of food, but forming a regular plural otherwise (thus "three lots of fish and chips", "the industry landed 5,200 tonnes of fish in 1998" but "the order of fishes", "the miracle of the loaves and fishes", the phrase "sleep with the fishes"). The usage does vary, however, so that for example the phrase "five fish in an aquarium" might to another native user be "five fishes in an aquarium". Using the plural form fish could imply many individual fish(es) of the same species while fishes could imply many individual fish(es) of differing species.
Other nouns that have identical singular and plural forms include:
^ Note 4: Referring to individual songs in the blues musical style: "play me a blues"; "he sang three blues and a calypso"
^ Note 5: Referring, in the plural, to animals in a herd: "fifty head of cattle"
^ Note 6: As a unit of weight equal to 14 pounds
The plural of a few nouns can also be formed from the singular by adding -n or -en, stemming from the Old English weak declension:
| ox | oxen | (particularly when referring to a team of draft animals, sometimes oxes in nonstandard American English) |
| child | children | (actually earlier plural "cildra/cildru" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural) |
| brother | brethren | (archaic plural of brother; earlier "brether" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural. Now used in fraternal orders.) |
| cow | kine | (archaic/regional; actually earlier plural "kye" [cf. Scots "kye" - "cows"] plus -en suffix, forming a double plural) |
| eye | eyen | (rare, found in some regional dialects) |
| shoe | shoon | (rare/dialectal) |
| house | housen | (rare/dialectal, used by Rudyard Kipling in Puck of Pook's Hill) |
| hose | hosen | (rare/archaic, used in King James Version of the Bible) |
The word box, referring to a computer, is pluralized semi-humorously to boxen in the Leet dialect. Multiple VAX computers, likewise, are sometimes called Vaxen particularly if operating as a cluster, but multiple Unix systems are usually Unices along the Latin model.[8]
The word sistren, referring to Christian sisters [modeled on brethren], is also semi-humorously pluralized.
The plural is sometimes formed by simply changing the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called ablaut (these are sometimes called mutated plurals):
| foot | feet |
| goose | geese |
| louse | lice |
| man | men |
| mouse | mice |
| tooth | teeth |
| woman | women |
This group consists of words that historically belong to the Old English consonantal declension, see Germanic umlaut#I-mutation in Old English.
Mouse is sometimes pluralized mouses in discussions of the computer mouse; however, mice is just as common.
Mongoose has the plural mongooses, or less commonly mongeese by analogy to geese.
English has borrowed a great many words from Latin and Classical Greek. The general trend with loanwords is toward what is called Anglicization or naturalization, that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns (particularly ones from Latin) have retained their original plurals for some time after they are introduced. Other nouns have become Anglicized, 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 linguist, the plural of appendix is appendices (following the original language); for physicians, however, 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 Anglicized forms are more common. In the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicized forms when these are more common.
| alumna | alumnae |
| formula | formulae/formulas |
| encyclopaedia (or encyclopædia) / encyclopedia | encyclopaedias / encyclopedias (encyclopaediae and encyclopediae are rare) |
| index | indices | /ˈɪndɨsiːz/ | or indexes |
| matrix | matrices | /ˈmeɪtrɨsiːz/ | |
| vertex | vertices | /ˈvɜrtɨsiːz/ |
Some people treat process as if it belonged to this class, pronouncing processes /ˈprɒsɨsiːz/ instead of standard /ˈprɒsɛsɨz/. Since the word comes from Latin processus, whose plural in the fourth declension is processūs with a long u, this pronunciation is by analogy, not etymology.
| axis | axes | /ˈæksiːz/ |
| crisis | crises | /ˈkraɪsiːz/ |
| testis | testes | /ˈtɛstiːz/ |
Axes, the plural of axis, is pronounced differently from axes (/ˈæksɨz/), the plural of ax(e).
| series | series |
| species | species |
| automaton | automata |
| criterion | criteria |
| phenomenon | phenomena (more below) |
| polyhedron | polyhedra |
| addendum | addenda |
| agendum (obsolete, not listed in most dictionaries) | agenda means a "list of items of business at a meeting" and has the plural agendas |
| datum | data (Now usually treated as a singular mass noun in both informal and educated usage, but usage in scientific publications shows a strong American/British divide. American usage generally prefers to treat data as a singular in all contexts, including in serious and academic publishing.[9][10][11] British usage now widely accepts treating data as singular in standard English,[12] including educated everyday usage[13] at least in non-scientific use.[14] British scientific publishing usually still prefers treating data as a plural.[15] Some British university style guides recommend using data for both the singular and the plural use[16] and some recommend treating it only as a singular in connection with computers.[17]) In engineering, drafting, surveying, and geodesy, and in weight and balance calculations for aircraft, a datum (plural datums or data) is a reference point, surface, or axis on an object or the Earth's surface against which measurements are made. |
| spectrum | spectra (as in power spectrum in electrical engineering |
| forum | fora/forums |
| medium | media (in communication systems and digital computers. This is now often treated as a singular mass noun)/ mediums (spiritualists, or items of medium size) |
| corrigendum | corrigenda |
| memorandum | memoranda/memorandums |
| millennium | millennia |
| alumnus | alumni |
| corpus | corpora |
| census | censuses |
| focus | foci |
| genus | genera |
| prospectus | prospectuses (plural prospectus is rare although technically correct) |
| radius | radii |
| syllabus | syllabi/syllabuses (in fact the Latin plural is syllabūs) |
| viscus | viscera |
| virus | viruses/virii ( see Plural form of words ending in -us#Virus ) |
| cactus | cactuses/cacti (in Arizona many people avoid either choice with cactus as both singular and plural.) |
| fungus | fungi |
| hippopotamus | hippopotamuses/hippopotami |
| octopus | octopuses (note: octopi also occurs, although it is strictly speaking unfounded,[18] because it is not a Latin noun of the second declension, but rather a Latinized form of Greek ὀκτώ-πους, eight-foot. The theoretically correct form octopodes is rarely used.) |
| platypus | platypuses (same as octopus: platypi occurs but is etymologically incorrect, and platypodes, while technically correct, is even rarer than octopodes) |
| terminus | termini/terminuses |
| uterus | uteri/uteruses |
| meatus | meatus |
| status | status |
Colloquial usages based in a humorous fashion on the second declension include Elvii to refer to multiple Elvis impersonators and Loti, used by petrolheads to refer to Lotus automobiles in the plural.
| Atlas | Atlantes (statues of the hero); but |
| atlas | atlases (map collections) |
| stigma | stigmata/stigmas |
| stoma | stomata/stomas |
| schema | schemata/schemas |
| dogma | dogmata/dogmas |
| lemma | lemmata/lemmas |
| anathema | anathemata/anathemas |
| beau | beaux or beaus |
| bureau | bureaus or bureaux |
| château | châteaux or châteaus |
| tableau | tableaux or tableaus |
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.
| kniazhestvo | kniazhestva/kniazhestvos |
| kobzar | kobzari/kobzars |
| oblast | oblasti/oblasts |
| cherub | cherubim/cherubs |
| seraph | seraphim/seraphs |
| matzah | matzot/matzahs |
| kibbutz | kibbutzim/kibbutzes |
Ot is pronounced os (with unvoiced s) in the Ashkenazi dialect.
| benshi | benshi |
| otaku | otaku |
| samurai | samurai |
Other nouns such as kimonos, ninjas, futons, and tsunamis are more often seen with a regular English plural. However, there are nouns such as "mawashi" that are seen with an irregular plural: mawashia.
| kiwi7 | kiwi/kiwis |
| kowhai | kowhai/kowhais |
| Māori8 | Māori/(occasionally Māoris) |
| marae | marae |
| tui | tuis/tui |
| waka | waka |
^ Note 7: When referring to the bird, kiwi may or may not take an -s; when used as an informal term for a New Zealander, it always takes an -s.
^ Note 8: Māori, when referring to a person of that ethnicity, does not usually take an -s. Many speakers avoid the use of Māori as a noun, and instead use it only as an adjective.
| Inuk | Inuit |
| inukshuk | inukshuit |
| canoe | canoes |
| cwm | cwms (Welsh valley) |
| igloo | igloos |
| kangaroo | kangaroos |
| kayak | kayaks |
| kindergarten | kindergartens |
| pizza | pizzas |
| sauna | saunas |
| ninja | ninjas |
Some words of foreign origin are much better known in the plural; usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic or actually incorrect or worse[19] by some speakers. In common usage, the original plural is considered to be the singular form. In many cases, back-formation has produced a regularized plural.
| Original singular | Original plural/ common singular |
Common plural |
|---|---|---|
| agendum | agenda9 | agendas |
| alga | algae | algae |
| bacterium | bacteria | bacteria |
| biscotto | biscotti | biscotti |
| candelabrum | candelabra | candelabras |
| datum10 | data | data (mass noun) |
| graffito | graffiti | graffiti (mass noun) |
| insigne | insignia | insignias |
| opus | opera | operas |
| panino | panini | paninis (currently gaining use) |
| paparazzo | paparazzi | paparazzi |
| spaghetto | spaghetti | spaghetti |
^ Note 9: An agenda commonly is used to mean a list of agendum.
^ Note 10: A single piece of data is sometimes referred to as a data point. In engineering, drafting, surveying, and geodesy, and in weight and balance calculations for aircraft, a datum (plural datums or data) is a reference point, surface, or axis on an object or the earth’s surface against which measurements are made.
Some plural nouns are used as such —invariably being accompanied by a plural verb form— while their singular forms are rarely encountered:
| nuptial | nuptials |
| phalanx11 | phalanges |
| tiding | tidings |
| victual | victuals |
| viscus | viscera |
^ Note 11: In medical terminology, a phalanx is any bone of the finger or toe. A military phalanx is pluralized phalanxes.
A related phenomenon is the confusion of a foreign plural for its singular form:
| criterion | criteria |
| phenomenon | phenomena |
| consortium | consortia |
| symposium | symposia |
Magazine was derived from Arabic via French. It was originally plural, but in French and English, it is always regarded as singular.
English, like some other languages, treats large numerals as nouns (cf. "there were ten soldiers" and "there were a hundred soldiers"). Thus, dozens is preferred to tens, while hundreds and thousands are also completely acceptable.
Plurals of numbers differ according to how they are used. The following rules apply to dozen, score, hundred, thousand, million, and similar terms:
A sagan of any kind of items is at least four billion, as in billions and billions. Hence, "about a sagan of micrometeorites." [20][21]
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 pluralia tantum 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.
Some nouns have no singular form. Such a noun is called a plurale tantum (see also Words better known in the plural above):
Some of these do have singular adjective forms, such as billiard ball. In addition, some are treated as singular in certain sentences, e.g., "billiards is a game played on a table with billiard balls and a cue", "measles is an infectious disease". Thanks is usually treated as a plural. Although "cow" is sometimes used in colloquial English for cattle, the term is age and gender specific.
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. 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. 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 only since the second half of the twentieth century.
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:
^ Note 12: Referring to the musical style as a whole.
Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. For example, when I have two grain(s) of sand, I do not have two sands; I have sand. There is more sand in your pile than in mine, not more sands. 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. Nor is information ever pluralized.
There is only one class of atoms called oxygen, but there are several isotopes of oxygen, which might be referred to as different oxygens. In casual speech, oxygen might be used as shorthand for "oxygen atoms", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so it is entirely sensible to 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 behavior (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").
Specie versus species make a fascinating case. Both words 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 "[payment] in kind").[22]
The majority of English compound nouns have one basic term, or head, with which they end, and are pluralized in typical fashion:
| able seaman | able seamen |
| head banger | head bangers |
| yellow-dog contract | yellow-dog contracts |
A compound that has one head, with which it begins, usually pluralizes its head:
| attorney general | attorneys general |
| bill of attainder | bills of attainder |
| court martial | courts martial |
| director general | directors general |
| fee simple absolute | fees simple absolute |
| governor-general | governors-general |
| passerby | passersby |
| ship of the line | ships of the line |
| son-in-law | sons-in-law |
| minister-president | ministers-president |
| knight-errant | knights-errant |
| procurator fiscal (in Scotland) | procurators fiscal |
It is common in informal speech to instead pluralize the last word in the manner typical of most English nouns, but in edited prose, the forms given above are 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:
| man-child | men-children |
| manservant | menservants |
| woman doctor | women doctors |
Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head:
| city-state | city-states |
| nurse-practitioner | nurse-practitioners |
| scholar-poet | scholar-poets |
In military usage, the term general, as part of an officer's title, is etymologically an adjective, but it has been adopted as a noun and thus a head, so compound titles employing it are pluralized at the end:
| brigadier general | brigadier generals |
| major general | major generals |
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:
| man-about-town | men-about-town |
| man-of-war | men-of-war |
| woman of the street | women of the street |
For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front —especially in cases where the compound is ad hoc and/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):
| ham on rye | hams on rye/ham-on-ryes |
| jack-in-the-box | jacks-in-the-box/jack-in-the-boxes |
| jack-in-the-pulpit | jacks-in-the-pulpit/jack-in-the-pulpits |
With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g., heads of state):
| head of state | heads of states/heads of state |
| son of a bitch | sons of bitches/sons-of-a-bitch |
With extended compounds constructed around o', only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural):
| cat-o'-nine-tails | cat-o'-nine-tails |
| jack-o'-lantern | jack-o'-lanterns |
| will-o'-the-wisp | will-o'-the-wisps |
Many English compounds have been borrowed directly from the French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. French-loaned compounds with a head at the beginning tend to pluralize both words, according to French practice:
| agent provocateur | agents provocateurs |
| entente cordiale | ententes cordiales |
| fait accompli | faits accomplis |
| idée fixe | idées fixes |
For compounds adopted directly from the French where the head comes at the end, it is generally regarded as acceptable either to pluralize both words or only the last:
| beau geste | beaux gestes/beau gestes |
| belle époque | belles époques/belle époques |
| bon mot | bons mots/bon mots |
| bon vivant | bons vivants/bon vivants |
| bel13 homme | beaux hommes |
^ Note 13: If the adjectives beau "beautiful/handsome", nouveau "new", or vieux "old" precede a masculine singular noun beginning with a vowel or a mute "h", they are changed to bel, nouvel, and vieil to help ease the pronunciation. The normal plural rule applies to plural nouns.
French-loaned compounds longer than two words tend to follow the rules of the original language, which usually involves pluralizing only the head at the beginning:
| aide-de-camp | aides-de-camp |
| cri du coeur | cris du coeur |
| coup d'état | coups d'état |
| tour de force | tours de force |
but:
| tête-à-tête | tête-à-têtes |
A distinctive case is the compound film noir. For this French-loaned artistic term, English-language texts variously use as the plural films noirs, films noir, and, most prevalently, film noirs. The 11th edition of the standard Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2006) lists film noirs as the preferred style. Three primary bases may be identified for this:
See also the headless nouns section below.
In The Language Instinct, linguist Steven Pinker discusses what he calls "headless words", typically bahuvrihi compounds, like lowlife and Red Sox, in which life and sox are not heads semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, nor are Red Sox a group of similarly colored socks. 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 a nonregular fashion. Thus, more than one lowlife are lowlifes, not "lowlives", according to Pinker. A related process can be observed with the compound maple leaf, pluralized in its common-noun form as maple leaves; when it is adopted as the name of an ice-hockey team, its plural becomes Maple Leafs. Other proposed examples include:
| flatfoot | flatfoots |
| sabertooth | sabertooths |
| still life | still lifes |
| tenderfoot | tenderfoots |
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.
Where words have taken on completely new meanings, irregular plurals may become regularized. Antennas is the accepted plural of antenna when it refers to electromagnetic equipment, in contrast to antennae for arthropods' and insects' feelers. The computer mouse is sometimes considered headless and pluralized as mouses, but also often as mice; in contrast to the compound headless words just discussed, there is a considerably stronger metaphorical relationship in this case, with many computer pointing devices resembling rodents with tails.
In other cases, the common form of a headless word is a nonregular plural; when such a word lacks a terminal s, it is treated as defective, thus making the singular version of the word identical: an individual member of the Boston baseball team is a Red Sox, just as all twenty-five are. One Chicago White Sox is a White Sox (questionable).
Sports team names like those discussed above —as well as more grammatically ordinary names such as Reds, Knicks, and Canadiens, and straightforward compound names such as Blue Jays — form a particular set of collective nouns. Closely related to the class of essentially plural headless nouns typified by Red Sox are the growing number of orthographically singular sports team names that may be classified as examples of a special type of collective noun — one that (a) has identical terms for both the collective and an individual thereof (as with the essentially plural headless noun) but (b) is not used as a counting noun beyond the singular. Two examples include the name of the NBA team of Miami, Florida — the Miami Heat — and the name of the Colorado NHL team —the Colorado Avalanche. While heat is a mass noun, whereas avalanche is a normal counting noun, in the context of a team name, both words operate as this special type of collective noun. Just as with the Red Sox or the White Sox, any one of the twelve current members of Miami's pro basketball squad is a Heat (questionable). Similarly, any individual member of the Colorado Avalanche is an Avalanche. However, where one may say something like "two Red Sox struck out" or "four White Sox doubled consequitively", the equivalent term is invariably used as an adjective when referring to multiple players of one of the teams named in this increasingly popular way: "two Heat players fought" or "four Avalanche players scored" (The followers of the Avalanche have a little more flexibility available to them, with "Avs" as the team's unofficial, but widely used nickname). Other examples include:
In not every case above is it certain that the name is ever used in its noun form to refer to anything but the collective — i.e., not even to an individual player. In other cases, it is possible that the name is sometimes used in its noun form (with or without a terminal s appended) to refer to multiple players, short of the whole collective. Note that in the above list, there is a case of an irregular plural in the "Minnesota Lynx", since the plural of "lynx" is "lynx". For example, "The scout spotted 20 lynx living in the neighborhood of the Great Bear Lake."
An exceptional case is that of the St. Louis Blues ice hockey team. The club is named after the song the "St. Louis Blues", which makes the team name Blues an irregularly pluralized word to begin with —one whose plural is identical to its singular. By this reckoning, then, an individual team member would also be a "Blues". However, because the name is spelled like a regular plural, its use as a collective noun leads to a process of back-formation, with the result that a single player on the team is known as a "Blue". This team's name's distinctive orthographical nature further allows it to be used freely as a counting noun, so that one may speak of, for instance, "two Blues in the penalty box".
Pinker discussed a case that could be construed as opposite, that of the Florida Marlins baseball team. Describing how the issue was raised by the talk show host David Letterman, Pinker asked, Why is the name the Marlins "given that those fish are referred to in the plural as marlin?" An analogous question could be asked about the Maple Leafs. Pinker's answer comes down to this: "A name is not the same thing as a noun."[23] Consequently, names (and nouns that derive from names) based on nouns with irregular plurals do not acquire them — though, as we see with Red Sox, new irregularities may arise.
Some nouns have two plurals, one used to refer to a number of things considered individually, the other to refer to a number of things collectively. In some cases, one of the two is nowadays archaic or dialectal.
| brother | brothers | brethren14 |
| cannon | cannons | cannon |
| child | children | childer15 |
| cloth | cloths | clothes16 |
| cow | cows | kine17 |
| die | dice | dies18 |
| fish | fish | fishes19 |
| iris (plant) | iris | irises20 |
| penny | pennies | pence21 22 |
| person | persons | people23 |
| pig | pigs | swine |
| sow | sows | swine |
^ Note 14: Brethren was used exclusively earlier, but over time, it has been replaced by brothers. Brethren is still used in some contexts such as the brethren of a monastic order.
^ Note 15: Childer has all but disappeared, but can still be seen in Childermas (Innocents' Day).
^ Note 16: Clothes formerly referred collectively to all of a household's washable cloth articles, but clothes is now used almost exclusively for the garments of people and dolls.
^ Note 17: Kine is still used in some rural English dialects.
^ Note 18: Dies is used as the plural for die in the sense of a mold; dice as the plural (and increasingly as the singular) in the sense of a small random number generator. Dice is also the accepted plural form of die in the semiconductor industry. On gambling and games, we may roll one die or toss two or three dice.
^ Note 19: Fish: the plural for one species of fish, or caught fish, is fish, but for the plural of fish of multiple individuals or species fishes is used. Fishes is also a word with a Biblical connotation.
^ Note 20: For multiple plants, iris is used, but irises is used for multiple blossoms.
^ Note 21: If one has several (British) one-penny pieces, one has several pennies. Pence is used for an amount of money, which can be made up of a number of coins of different denominations: one penny and one five-penny piece are together worth six pence. The suffixed minor currency unit of "p" (/pi/) is often vocalised, where such small divisions of currency are discussed in common speech, and used for both the singular and the "amount plural", but "number plurals" build upon the base values and any omission of the unit shifts the plural to the coin's numerator (e.g. "I have a one /pi/ and three twenty /piz/ and two fifties in my pocket. I cannot believe that I only have one pound, sixty-one /pi/ left after last night."). In written speech, a number of coins might be "two 10ps", although those that prefer to use apostrophes for initialisms might decide to use the variant of "two 10p's".
^ Note 22: Penny and pennies also refer to one or more American or Canadian one-cent pieces, though in American and Canadian usage, a nickel is worth five cents, not five pence. Also, a dime is worth ten cents, not pence, and a quarter (dollar) is worth twenty-five cents, not pence.
^ Note 23: The word people is usually treated as the suppletive plural of person (one person, many people). However, in legal and other formal contexts, the plural of person is persons; furthermore, people can also be a singular noun with its own plural (for example, "We are many persons, from many peoples").
Individual letters and abbreviations whose plural would be ambiguous if only an -s were added are pluralized by adding -'s.
Opinion is divided on whether to extend this use of the apostrophe to related but nonambiguous cases, such as the plurals of numerals (e.g., 1990's vs. 1990s) and words used as terms (e.g., "his writing uses a lot of but's" vs. "his writing uses a lot of buts"). Some writers favor the use of the apostrophe as consistent with its application in ambiguous cases; others say it confuses the plural with the possessive -'s and should be avoided whenever possible in pluralization, a view with which The Chicago Manual of Style concurs.
English and many other European languages form the plural of a one-letter abbreviation by doubling it: p. ("page"), pp. ("pages"); l. ("line"), ll. ("lines"). These abbreviations are used in literary work, such as footnotes and bibliographies.
Acronyms are initialisms that are used and pronounced as if they were words. For example, we have AMTRAK, HAL, LEM, NASA, and NATO. These contrast with the different variety that are read aloud one letter at a time: {C.I.A., C.S.M., D.O.D., E.U., G.C.M., G.P.S., I.B.M., N.A.C.A., N.S.A., R.C.A., R.P.M., S.S.T., T.W.A., U.S.S.R., W.P.A., etc.}
The most consistent approach for pluralizing pronounceable acronyms is to simply add a lowercase "s" as its suffix. This works even for acronyms ending with an s, such as with CASs (pronounced "kazzes"), while still making it possible to use the possessive form ("'s") for the acronyms without confusion. (One sometimes sees "-es" added, which also works acceptably: "OSes.") The old, old style of pluralizing single letters with "'s" was naturally extended to acronyms when they were all commonly written with periods. This form is still preferred by some people for all initialisms and thus "'s" as a suffix is often seen in informal usage.
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.
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 would be bicipites.
The word sastrugi (hard ridges on deep snow) is of Russian origin and its singular is sastruga; but the imaginary Latin-type singular sastrugus has sometimes been used.
Geographical place names ending with an "s" generally function as grammatically singular even if they look plural, for example: Arkansas, Athens, the Andes, Brussels, Chartres, Dallas, Kansas, Naples, New Orleans, the Netherlands, Paris (France or Texas), the Philippines, Santos, Texas, the River Thames, the United States, and Wales. For example, "The United States is a country in North America."
There are several different rules for this.
In discussing peoples whose demonym takes -man or -woman, there are three options: pluralize to -men or -women if referring to individuals, and use the root alone if referring to the whole nation, or add people.
| Dutchman Dutchwoman |
Dutchmen Dutchwomen |
the Dutch |
| Englishman Englishwoman |
Englishmen Englishwomen |
the English |
| Frenchman Frenchwoman |
Frenchmen Frenchwomen |
the French |
| Irishman Irishwoman |
Irishmen Irishwomen |
the Irish |
| Scotsman Scotswoman |
Scotsmen Scotswomen |
the Scots |
| Welshman Welshwoman |
Welshmen Welshwomen |
the Welsh |
One can say "a Scots(wo)man" or "a Scot", "Scots(wo)men", "Scottish people", or "Scots", and "the Scottish" or "the Scots". (Scotch is considered old fashioned.)
Several peoples have names that are simple nouns and can be pluralized by the addition of either -s or -ish (the later case often calls for the elimination of terminal letters so the pluralizing suffix can be connected directly with the last consonant of the root):
| Dane | Danes | the Danes the Danish |
| Finn | Finns | the Finns the Finnish |
| Spaniard | Spaniards | the Spaniards the Spanish (much more common) |
| Swede | Swedes | the Swedes the Swedish |
Names of peoples that end in -ese take no plural:
| Chinese | Chinese Chinese people |
the Chinese |
| Japanese | Japanese Japanese people |
the Japanese |
Other names of peoples that have no plural form include Swiss and Québécois, although the latter is sometimes interchangeable with Quebec(k)er, which pluralizes as Quebec(k)ers.
Most names for Native Americans are not pluralized:
Some exceptions include Algonquins, Apaches, Aztecs, Black Hawks, Chippewas, Hurons, Incas, Mayans, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Seminoles. Note also the following words borrowed from Inuktitut:
| Inuk | Inuit |
| Iqalummiuq | Iqalummiut ("inhabitant of Iqaluit") |
| Nunavimmiuq | Nunavimmiut ("inhabitant of Nunavik") |
| Nunavummiuq | Nunavummiut ("inhabitant of Nunavut") |
Names of most other peoples of the world are pluralized using the normal English rules.
A number of words like army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set that compose it. 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."[24] Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England are playing Germany tonight refers to a football game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country. In North American English, such words are invariably treated as singular.
Another type of irregular plural occurs in the register of the English upper classes in the context of field sports, where the singular form is used in place of the plural, as in "two lion" or "five pheasant". Eric Partridge refers to these as "snob plurals" and conjectures that they may have developed by analogy with the common English irregular plural animal words "deer", "sheep" and "trout".[25]