{"id":80,"date":"2008-04-05T00:32:47","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T00:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=80"},"modified":"2021-02-03T17:20:50","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T23:20:50","slug":"plurals-of-odd-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/singular-vs-plural\/plurals-of-odd-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Irregular Plurals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many nouns in English have a plural form either with an <em>s\/es<\/em> ending or without. For example, when is it correct to use <em>youth<\/em> vs. <em>youths<\/em>, <em>fish<\/em> vs. <em>fishes<\/em>, or <em>hair<\/em> vs. <em>hairs<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Use <em>youths<\/em> and <em>hairs<\/em> when countable.<br \/>\n<strong>Example:<\/strong> Three youths were given awards for community service.<\/p>\n<p>If <em>youth<\/em> is being used collectively, do not add the <em>s<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example:<\/strong> The youth of today watch less TV but spend more time on the computer.<\/p>\n<p>When <em>youth<\/em> is used as a collective noun, you may follow it with either a singular or plural verb. I chose the plural verbs <em>watch<\/em> and <em>spend<\/em> because I felt that we were using <em>youth<\/em> in a plural manner here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Examples:<\/strong> The hairs on her chin were long.<br \/>\nHer hair is long.<\/p>\n<p>The words <em>fish<\/em> and <em>fishes<\/em> are interchangeable, although some references say to use <em>fishes<\/em> when referring to two or more species.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Examples:<\/strong> This fish is huge.<br \/>\nThese barracuda fish are huge.<br \/>\nAll the barracuda fish in the reef are enormous.<br \/>\nThe fishes in the reef are colorful. (indicating two or more species)<\/p>\n<p>Some nouns do not change at all in their plural form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Examples:<\/strong> sheep, deer, offspring, series, species<\/p>\n<p>Other nouns have plural forms that do not involve adding an <em>s<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Examples:<\/strong> alumnus\/alumni, radius\/radii, child\/children, woman\/women, foot\/feet, goose\/geese, tooth\/teeth, vertebra\/vertebrae, mouse\/mice<\/p>\n<p>To confuse us even more, some nouns change their <em>is<\/em> ending in the singular to an <em>es<\/em> ending in the plural.<\/p>\n<p>Examples: parenthesis\/parentheses, paralysis\/paralyses, diagnosis\/diagnoses<\/p>\n<p>Is there a simple way to know the plural of a noun? Only if you\u2019re psychic. The rest of us are stuck with having to rely on the dictionary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many nouns in English have a plural form either with an s\/es ending or without. For example, when is it correct to use youth vs. youths, fish vs. fishes, or hair vs. hairs? Use youths and hairs when countable. Example: Three youths were given awards for community service. If youth is being used collectively, do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singular-vs-plural"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}