Singular Plurals--or How Two Rats Became a Rose

Have you ever tried to explain to a four-year-old child why two feet aren't foots, or two mice aren't mouses? Of course the appropriate grownup response to such questions is, "Uh, that's just the way it is. And why aren't you watching TV?"

As children we learn that most nouns in English change from singular to plural with the addition of -s or -es. Regardless of our age, it's the few hundred exceptions that can be perplexing. Here are some of the blatant rule-breakers:

• mass nouns--such as mud, music, and peace--which have no plural because they name things that can't readily be counted



• nouns that show up only in the plural--scissors, jeans, congratulations



• a few nouns, like ox and child, that still rely on the Old English plural marker, -en



• a few other nouns (foot, mouse) that form the plural by changing a vowel



• and several borrowed nouns that hold on to their foreign plural endings--such as Latin alumni (or alumnae) and Greek criteria

To illustrate some of these eccentric plural forms, here's a little verse from Willard Espy's The Best of an Almanac of Words at Play (1999):

Now if mouse in the plural should be, and is, mice,
Then house in the plural, of course, should be hice,
And grouse should be grice and spouse should be spice
And by the same token should blouse become blice.

And consider the goose with its plural of geese;
Then a double caboose should be called a cabeese,
And noose should be neese and moose should be meese
And if mama's papoose should be twins, it's papeese.

Then if one thing is that, while some more is called those,
Then more than one hat, I assume, would be hose,
And gnat would be gnose and pat would be pose
And likewise the plural of rat would be rose.
--Author unknown

More About Nouns:

• Zero Plurals
• Collective Nouns
• Concrete Nouns
• Proper Nouns