Definition:
The form of a noun that typically denotes more than one person, thing, or instance. Contrast with singular. Although the English plural is commonly formed with the suffix -s or -es, the plural of some nouns (such as sheep) is identical in form to the singular (see zero plural), while some other nouns (such as dust) have no plural form. See also:
Etymology:
From the L:atin, "more"Examples and Observations:
- "“Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede."
(Terry Pratchett) - "Media, the plural of mediocrity."
(Jimmy Breslin) - "In his song One Hippopotami, the comedian Alan Sherman sang, 'The plural of "half" is "whole"; the plural of "two minks" is "one mink stole."' It is an astute observation. The linguist Peter Tiersma has found that whenever a set of objects can easily be construed as a single assemblage, a regular plural is in danger of congealing into a mass noun or an irregular plural. This is happening today to the noun data, which often refers to large quantities of information and which is easily conceived of as stuff rather than things; the word is turning from a plural (many data) to a mass noun (much data). . . .
"Nonstandard dialects are filled with double plurals such as oxens, dices, lices, and feets, and that is how we got the strangest plural in Standard English, children. Once it was childer, with the old plural suffix -er also seen in the German equivalent Kinder. But people stopped hearing it as a plural, and when they had to refer to more than one child, they added a second plural marker, -en. Today many rural and foreign speakers still don't think of children as plural, and have added a third suffix, yielding the triply plural childrens."
(Steven Pinker, Words and Rules, Basic Books, 1999)
Pronunciation: PLUR-el
