WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

In the case of plurals, some get 's', some don't

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Fish Illustration
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Fish Illustration

A natural follow-up to my last column about words that live in the plural seemed to be one about words that don't get the regular "s" at the end.

Certain words shun the final "s" to become plural.

Bambi is a deer. If Bambi had a twin brother, the two of them would be deer, too.

More than one moose is still a moose. Remember Edwin Meese, who was in President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet? My nonscientific theory is that he is responsible for all the people who think two or more moose are "meese."

Numerous sheep, bison and swine are the same as the words in singular form.

Did the bison party with the swine on Noah's Ark?

Multiple pike, trout and salmon get no final esses. (By the way, the "l" in "salmon" is silent, but that's a story for another day.)

The plural of "fish" is also fish. But this one has a quirk. Let's say you have six salmon. You might brag, "I caught six fish." But if you have three salmon and three trout, you would say, "I caught two kinds of fishes." This indicates you have two categories of fishes.

And this is yet another reason why English is so hard to learn.

The "no s" thing doesn't just occur in the animal kingdom.

The English language doesn't have offsprings, luggages, homeworks or informations. We don't have internets, despite what George W. Bush called the internet during the 2000 presidential race.

People give you "advice." Two people don't give you "advices.''

Even if you have two trash bags, you only take out the garbage, not the garbages.

You get the idea.

Some other nouns become plural without an "s." These change from within and are called "mutated plurals.''

Woman becomes women.

Child becomes children. Ox becomes oxen.

Tooth becomes teeth. Mouse becomes mice.

Person becomes people. (No one needs to use "persons." I would not object if law enforcement officials changed the name of their missing persons departments to "missing people" departments.)

English also has a special ending for a word containing an "f." Again, the rule doesn't always apply.

Half becomes halves. Leaf becomes leaves.

But roof becomes roofs and chief becomes chiefs.

And some words could go either way.

More than one wharf can be wharves or wharfs. The same goes for the word "hoof."

More proof that you should have a dictionary near you at all times.

In last week's column I forgot "grits" on the list of always plural words. A possible partner to shrimp (the plural of which has no "s") is grits. You don't eat just one grit because that would leave you extremely hungry.

MAJORITY VERSUS PLURALITY

With all this talk of plurals, I thought I should go off on a tangent.

The "majority" is a number that is more than half. In a race with 100 votes, the candidate with 60 would have the majority.

A "plurality" is simply a number higher than the next highest.

In a race with 100 votes, if one candidate gets 40, one gets 30, one 20 and one 10, the candidate with 40 wins with a plurality but not with a majority.

HEYDAY

When you're in your heyday, you're in your prime. So many idioms convey this: "prime of life," "salad days" (from Shakespeare), "halcyon days" (also Shakespeare), "glory days" (I want to say "from Springsteen," but I don't think he created the phrase).

I have seen heyday misspelled as "hayday." It has nothing to do with hay. The word comes from an archaic expression for happiness or surprise, "heyda," which was similar to "hurrah."

OOPS

Typos are bad any time, but they're extra embarrassing when the topic is language.

One headline in a Virginia paper announced registration for "Foreign Langauge Experience."

Though the word is spelled wrong, most people would understand that as "language." The ability of the human brain to comprehend such typos is jokingly called "typoglycemia." No, the word hasn't made it into the dictionary yet. And, yes, I wish I had made it up myself.

Sources: Language Learning Room, Oxford Dictionaries, American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Word Wizard, The Phrase Finder, Reference.com, The Associated Press Stylebook

Reach Bernadette at

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ActiveStyle on 01/22/2018

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