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>..because you can say "I eat mutton"
No, I cannot say that :) I like Lambrusco with some meat dishes, but will not partake of Mutton Rothschild.
TEd
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wow
You asked If the plural of mouse is mice, Is the plural of spouse spice?
According to Walt Kelly it was.
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In reply to:
you wouldn't generally say "I eat sheep" ..
But you might say, as did Handel, "we like sheep".
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veteran
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veteran
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Is the plural of spouse spice? >According to Walt Kelly it was.
Was it him who said that "life is a variety of spice"?
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Excuse my ignorance but a) who was Handel and b) why did he like sheep
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bel, you'll have to forgive them for flocking and going astray...
this from Handel's Messiah: "all we like sheep who have gone astray"
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La belle belMarduk asked, sheepishly, In reply to:
Excuse my ignorance but a) who was Handel and b) why did he like sheep
Handel was a German composer who lived in London for much of his life, inflicting an awful lot of (in my opinion) relatively mediocre music on the unsuspecting populace. This was in the late eighteenth century, and he would have gone down big (again in my opinion) with the punks had it been late last century.
He wrote a well-known piece of music called "The Messiah", another bunch called "Fireworks Music" (I may have the title slightly wrong), and he apparently spoke English with a similar accent to Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes.
All of this clearly explains why he liked sheep.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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OP
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This was in the late eighteenth century, and he would have gone down big (again in my opinion) with the punks had it been late last century. There were punks at the end of the 19th Century?
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old hand
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old hand
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This really follows the "plurals" thread...
Some years ago I became aware of words used as a plural OF an existing plural. The only one I recall is a KINE of cattle - defined as (more or less) "A collective noun for multiple HERDS of cattle".
Furthermore, "Kine" also ties in with another plural/collective noun pertinent to this discussion - "MOB" - the Australian word for FLOCK (of sheep). Specifically, there's a uniquely(?) Australian (Northern Territory in particular - THE outback!!) phrase, "Big mobs". This is typically used as the laconic reply to a question (such as, "Did you catch any fish?) that would be more correctly answered, "Yes, many". The way I see it, KINE = BIG MOBS.
I'm sure there are others - what does one say for more than one SWARM of bees for instance?
stales
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In reply to:
you wouldn't generally say "I eat sheep" .. ..because you can say "I eat mutton" - and also: "mutton was plentiful.." Certainly the commodity aspect is more relevant here than the "uncountable" property.- But, Bingley, is this linguistics or something else?
Now, class , you remember what I was saying about some words being both countable and uncountable depending on the meaning? For example Beer (meaning the beverage or shampoo (according to taste -- can't stand the stuff myself, even the smell of it makes me feel ill)) and Beer/Beers (meaning types thereof). If we are referring to the animal (fish, chicken, rabbit, etc.) the word is countable, if we are referring to the meat we get from the animal the word is uncountable. So we can say "Fish is expensive" meaning the meat, or "Fish are expensive" meaning the cyclists given away as prizes at funfairs. As a separate issue, in some words the singular and plural forms are the same. So we "Six sheep were grazing in the field", or "Six fish were cycling by".
Bingley
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