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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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1 : type that is spilled or mixed
Yes, that's cool! :-) Yikes--I've heard of alphabet soup, but I've never heard of alphabet pie...
Speaking of oddities--we'd never say, "Have a soup", would we? Is soup technically singular?
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Technically, unless we are referring to kinds of soup, soup is uncountable, i.e., it has no singular or plural. Uncountable nouns always take a singular verb, have no plural form, never take 'a' or 'an' and, hence the name, cannot be counted 1, 2, 3, etc.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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old hand
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we'd never say, "Have a soup", would we? -
Yet someone could say "have a smoke" - and "smoke" is also unlikely to be used in plural.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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never take 'a' or 'an'
Unless they do. Also, they *do take the, as in, "Will you have the soup or the salad?"
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>and "smoke" is also unlikely to be used in plural.
You are kidding, right? "Smokes" is more common here than "cigarettes"
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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My mother, 72 years old, refers to her cigarettes as her 'smokes.' And a cigarette is certainly easily countable.
However, if you were watching the smoke rise from many smokestacks, say at some sort of factory with many outlets, you'd say something like, "Look at the smoke rising today over there..." Or perhaps, "Look at all the smoke rising today..." But you wouldn't say, "Look at all the smokes rising." :)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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However, if you were watching the smoke rise from many smokestacks, say at some sort of factory with many outlets, you'd say something like, "Look at the smoke rising today over there..." Or perhaps, "Look at all the smoke rising today..." But you wouldn't say, "Look at all the smokes rising." :)
but if, instead of smoke stackes, you were looking at the smokey mist rising from mountains,the you have the Great Smokies!
i think the thing is that the verb smoke-(Do you smoke?/She smokes [/greeen] takes an s, (and do then lends the S to the smoke for a short term for cigarettes, but smoke itself is singular...
we have smokey areas, or smoke filled rooms, but not a room filled with smokes, only a room filled with smokers, each of whom is adding more smoke.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I can see why soup and smoke are uncountable nouns but tell me my deer, why are sheep considered uncountable?!?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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why are sheep considered uncountable?
Because you always fall asleep before you get done.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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fall asleep
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