i recently heard that only the sigular form od the word POETRY is used. but when i searched for "poetries" in google i got many results....
What is the exact plural form of POETRY..
please help
tuhin
I would never use a plural for "poetry". I can't think of any circumstance under which "poetry" would need a plural. Finding Google hits doesn't really prove anything except that not everyone agrees with me! But from looking at the first page of hits when I googled "poetries", it is simple misuse. "Poetry" has no plural in most of the main dictionaries (OED, Cambridge, Websters, Mirriam-Websters, etc.)
If you are speaking of, say, classical Latin poetry vs. modern free verse vs. Elizabethan sonnets, you might argue for using a plural of poetry and I would go with poetries. Not necessarily something you're going to run into in a dictionary though. They generally only list plurals if they don't fit the general rule.
No, but some dictionaries seem to be listing it as a singular noun, no plural. Can't see the OED, so nothing definitive, of course.
I still thing that "poetries" is wrong, despite some 220,000 hits on Google to the contrary ...
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I still thing that "poetries" is wrong, despite some 220,000 hits on Google to the contrary ...
Yet you probably think that books is the plural of book.
How many people using a solecism for how long does it take to make the error correct?
My dictionary software, Babylon, confirms that "poetries" is no solecism.
plural poetry == poetry slam
The problem isn't the plural per se; it's that the plural changes the meaning of the noun radically.
Hi Tuhin
I wonder if you were thinking of poem and poems. Poetry usually refers to the entire genre so is not often used in the plural.
Doesn't poesy cover tuhin's question?
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Doesn't poesy cover tuhin's question?
which sense, this one?
c: artificial, precious, or sentimentalized poetic writing
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If you are speaking of, say, classical Latin poetry vs. modern free verse vs. Elizabethan sonnets, you might argue for using a plural of poetry and I would go with poetries.
it is of this which I agree.
As in:
"The idea of belles lettres is in itself a French concept, and French poetry does stand apart even from the poetries of other Romance languages in its lyricism."
This from a website on translating Rimbaud.
just to be contrary, what would be wrong with recasting M's example as "French poetry does stand apart even from the poetry of other Romance languages in its lyricism."
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nothing.
Of which this thread is much to do about.
> Of which this thread is much to do about.
pure poetry, Milo.
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The problem isn't the plural per se; it's that the plural changes the meaning of the noun radically.
What IP said. Meanwhile, I've heard "music" pluralized, and in the context, it makes sense.
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As in:
"The idea of belles lettres is in itself a French concept, and French poetry does stand apart even from the poetries of other Romance languages in its lyricism."
This from a website on translating Rimbaud.
So why are you chasing him?
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So why are you chasing him?
Chasing whom? 
To go back to the poetry of this fred, I agree that pluralising "poetry" adds another connotation to the basic meaning of the word (if "poetry" can ever be said to have a basic meaning). It stresses the plurality, in a context where you are possibly counting or enumerating or classifying poetries rather than looking into the art itself.
chasing Rimbaud. Oh, wait. That's prolly a phrase you wouldn't know. That fellow is always chasing rainbows means he is seeking the pot of gold rather than doing constructive work.
I apologize for stretching my pun a bit thin.
Vogon Poetry is poetry written by Vogons, a fictional race in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to The Guide:
Vogon poetry is of course, the third wors in the universe....The very wors poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth....Listening to it is an experience similar to torture as demonstrated when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are forced to listen to the Vogon captain's poetry prior to being thrown out of an airlock--Wikipedia
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chasing Rimbaud. Oh, wait. That's prolly a phrase you wouldn't know. That fellow is always chasing rainbows means he is seeking the pot of gold rather than doing constructive work.
I apologize for stretching my pun a bit thin.
Oooooh, I see now... I do know the phrase "chasing rainbows", but I didn't make the connection... Thanks.
Instead of 'poetries' I would probably say 'kinds of poetry' or
'forms of poetry', but I don't see any real objection to the word.
How does a plural change the concept or meaning of its singular noun?
Have we been overlooking PLURAL POWER?