When a singular noun ends in one of these sounds, its plural is spoken by appending /ɪz/ or /əz/ (in some transcription systems, this is abbreviated as /ᵻz/).
The spelling usually adds -s, but certain instances (detailed below) may add -es instead: Singular nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant in many cases spell the plural by adding -es (pronounced /z/): However many nouns of foreign origin, including almost all Italian loanwords, add only -s: Nouns ending in a vocalic y (that is, used as a vowel) preceded by a consonant usually drop the y and add -ies (pronounced /iz/, or /aiz/ in words where the y is pronounced /ai/): Words ending in quy also follow this pattern, since in English qu is a digraph for two consonant sounds (/kw/) or sometimes one (/k/): However, proper nouns (particularly names of people) of this type usually form their plurals by simply adding -s:[1][2] the two Kennedys, there are three Harrys in our office.
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: In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:[5] Many nouns ending in /f/ or /θ/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant: Some can do either: There are many other less regular ways of forming plurals, usually stemming from older forms of English or from foreign borrowings.
Many of these are the names of animals: 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.
Classical Latin has a very complex system of endings in which there are five categories or declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns (some with sub-categories).
Different paradigms of Latin pronunciation can lead to confusion as to the number or gender of the noun in question.
Similarly, words such as criteria and phenomena are used as singular by some speakers, although this is still considered incorrect in standard usage (see below).
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.
It is standard meaning the form of money, where it derives from the Latin singular ablative in the phrase in specie.
Final -um becomes -a, or just adds -s: 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.
Many regard omission as more correct: Notes: Some words borrowed from Inuktitut and related languages spoken by the Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, retain the original plurals.
These heads are also nouns and the head usually pluralizes, leaving the second, usually a post-positive adjective, term unchanged: It is common in informal speech to pluralize the last word instead, like most English nouns, but in edited prose aimed at educated people, the forms given above are usually preferred.
Many English compounds have been borrowed directly from French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules.
Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of but's").
Likewise, acronyms and initialisms are normally pluralized simply by adding (lowercase) -s, as in MPs, although the apostrophe is sometimes seen.
English (like Latin and certain other European languages) can form a plural of certain one-letter abbreviations by doubling the letter: p. ("page"), pp.
In The Language Instinct, linguist Steven Pinker discusses what he calls "headless words", typically bahuvrihi compounds, such as lowlife and flatfoot, in which life and foot are not heads semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, and a flatfoot is not a type of foot.
Another analogous case is that of sport team names such as the Miami Marlins and Toronto Maple Leafs.
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.
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 behaviour (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").
[23] Certain words which were originally plural in form have come to be used almost exclusively as singulars (usually uncountable); for example billiards, measles, news, mathematics, physics, etc.
The nonstandard, offensive, and now obsolete Chinee and Portugee singulars are back-formations from the standard Chinese and Portuguese.
Geographical names may be treated as singular even if they are plural in form, if they are regarded as representing a single entity such as a country: The United States is a country in North America (similarly with the Netherlands, the Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Nations, etc.).
Words such as army, company, crowd, family, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, party and team may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set composing 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.
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.
Such usage is common with the definite article, to denote people of a certain type generally: the unemployed, the homeless.
This is common with certain nationalities: the British, the Dutch, the English, the French, the Irish, the Spanish, the Welsh, and those where the adjective and noun singular and plural are identical anyway, including the Swiss and those in -ese (the Chinese etc.).
The noun is normally used anyway when referring to specific sets of people (five Frenchmen, a few Spaniards), although the adjective may be used especially in case of a group of mixed or unspecified sex, if the demonym nouns are gender-specific: there were five French (or French people) in the bar (if neither Frenchmen or Frenchwomen would be appropriate).