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My husband and I took a walk this evening, and saw eight deer in the stable meadow. Coming back, I got to wondering about the following, and decided to post it. I'm so glad this place is here! So--
Do you say I walked past the stable, or I walked past the stables? If you say stables, do you say stables is or stables are? (It is only one building.)
I'll be particularly interested to learn if there are cross-pondian differences, since Brit-speakers say things like family are, while we say family is.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Stables, and ARE..
There was a fire at the Belmont Race track stables a few years ago. They are old, ornate with gingerbread.
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Small jump shift:
I've wondered the same about kennel and kennels.
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Carpal Tunnel
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The stables at Freehold (NJ) Racetrack had a couple of horrible fires over the years, too...lost a lot of prize horses.
Put the horse in its stable.
But in speaking of an all-inclusive complex I've always used and heard sstables, as in the Freehold Stables.
However, if you were speaking about a particular building in the complex, you might say "How many stables are in this stable?" Each berth is a stable, but each separate building can be a stable, too. Hmmm.
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Jackie, I have understood stable to mean, the building housing the horses; many such buildings (as in a large stud farm) to be, stables and the individual housing units for each horse inside the stable to be, stalls.
However, I have heard kennel used interchangeably in this context. Battersea calls itself a Dogs' home not a Kennel, if that's any help.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In many large stables, there are narrow stalls, and also larger ones called loose boxes which
are big enough the horse can lie down. I got a goody buy on a horse that had been kicked,
and had a swollen leg that showed no improvement when he was kept in a narrow stall.
Winthin just a couple days of our putting him in a loose box, the leg healed very quickly.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yeahbut®, don't you say, "He went over to the riding stable"? I am resisting looking this up, because I'm really interested in what people say, and think about this.
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Good Q, Jackie. BTW what do you call a herd of horses? A bunch of cattle are called a herd but it seems undignified to call a bunch of horses a "herd".
And, while we're at it, how come "a bunch" is plural but "a herd" is singular (likewise "a crowd")? Or should we say "a bunch of cattle is called a herd"? Doesn't sound right to me but I guess it's correct, huh?
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The herd term seems to apply to any group of hoofed animals, be it cows, horses, elephants, buffalo; but since I haven't done an exhaustive study of the subject, there may be some hoofed animal groups that band together under some other name (a hump of camels?)
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Carpal Tunnel
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. Animals - Some Collective Nouns. By popular request... ... A building of
rooks; A bury of conies/rabbits; A business of ferrets/flies; A caravan of camels; ...
www.collectivenoun.com/
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