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It's late. I need to be in bed. But I've been meaning to start this thread for over two weeks now and I keep forgetting to.
Are there any plural forms of English nouns that you find interesting or noteworthy? Or perhaps just ones that you have to give yourself a mental nudge to get the forms right?
Linguistics aside, I think it's funny to see that our 'man', singular, becomes 'men', plural. Not so hard. But what is funnier is then we have the singular 'specimen' but the plural 'specimens.' Again, Faldage & gang, this is funny to me on a superficial level. And I imagine that it will be fun to take a look at an interesting working list with my kids this fall.
Do any of you have some interesting plural forms that you could note here?
If you've already done this thread way back when, please let me know and I'll delete this one and look elsewhere. But I really would like to know some of the unusual plural forms you've found interesting--on that superficial level.
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>Do any of you have some interesting plural forms that you could note here?
Well, I like millennia, which seems to be coming under threat from millenniums. It's not so much a prescriptivist thing (I say forums, not fora), as an aesthetic thing. I just think millennia sounds nicer. A google comparison still gives millennia a huge lead, but the ums are gaining, it seems.
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Is there a singular for memorabilia?
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I'll take your word for it. Is it ever used?
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Memorabilium is a backformation from the neuter plural memorabilia. The proper singular is memorabilis. Memorabilium scores about 3:1 over memorabilis on the googlometer. The first 10 hits for memorabilium are all in Latin. Go figure.
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Thanks. Has anyone ever said, for ex., that they are going to collect a memorabilium or a memorabilis, though? WW, I haven't meant to ignore your topic and take over your thread--sorry. Connie took the one I was going to put (pppbbttt to you, C!  ), but Faldage's post reminded me of bacillus.
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I would suspect that anyone who said something like, "I got another memorabilium today," would have done so humorously.
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Meanwhile, one of my favorite exceptional plurals is monies.
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I don't recall ever seeing it, but I wonder what the plural of pi would look like. If you simply add an "s", you'd have to be very clear you weren't using French.
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not to be a spoil-sport or nothin', but isn't pi a unique, singular thing that doesn't take well to pluralization?!
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I wasn't going to say anything but I just came across this monstrosity: Technically, the plural is chiasmi, (as with octopus). ( http://www.chiasmus.com/whatischiasmus.shtml) and this thread is too good an opportunity to express my astonishment that anyone who wishes to pontificate to the public at large on linguistic matters could make such a mistake. Bingley
Bingley
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This man seems a little strange; Gurunet agrees with him on the plural, however. But what they have as an example seems to be what he calls antithesis.
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old hand
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Anglosaxons seem to be most intrigued by plural forms originating from greek or latin. But if you learn English as a second language, plurals like geese, lice or mice take more effort to memorize. (I am not going to rehash mongoose here..)
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One stem of the flower is gladiolus and OED says the plural is gladioluses. BUT
I had an aunt who persisted in using gladioli and pronouncing it Gla-DIE-oh-lie.
We all have eccentric relatives. God knows I try my best to keep up the tradidtion!
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Gurunet agrees with him on the plural
Of chiasmus perhaps, but his example of octopus is a little cock-eyed.
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"...isn't pi a unique, singular thing that doesn't take well to pluralization?"
Probably why I can't recall seeing it. But I can conceive of a classroom scenario wherein the math professor might say, "In this equation, you will note that the pis cancel."
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I just checked MW and will paste below what's there. The pi that we think of in math has the plural 'pis,' but another kind of pi, that can also be spelled 'pie' (not the edible pie), has the plural 'pies.'
OK, here's the scoop of pi from MW:
Main Entry: 4pi
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pis /'pIz/
Etymology: Middle Greek, from Greek pei, of Semitic origin; akin to Hebrew pE pe
Date: 1823
1 : the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet -- see ALPHABET table
2 a : the symbol ð denoting the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter b : the ratio itself : a transcendental number having a value to eight decimal places of 3.14159265
And:
Main Entry: 1pi
Variant(s): also pie /'pI/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pies
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: circa 1659
1 : type that is spilled or mixed
2 : a pi character or matrix
So we have two possible plurals for pi, depending upon meaning. Cool, huh?
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Has there been a revolution in mathematics while I wasn't looking? According to my machine, in ww's citation, pi is represented by the Anglo-saxon eth.
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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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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.
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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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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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>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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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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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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I can see why soup and smoke are uncountable nouns but tell me my deer, why are sheep considered uncountable?!?
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why are sheep considered uncountable?
Because you always fall asleep before you get done.
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fall asleep
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fall asleep
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In reply to:
Unless they do. Also, they *do take the, as in, "Will you have the soup or the salad?"
I never said they didn't take 'the'. It might be more precise to say words can have countable and uncountable meanings. Thus soup meaning the edible liquid is uncountable, while if 'soup' means kinds of the liquid or servings of the liquid, then it is countable.
The supermarket sells a wide variety of soups.
Three soups and two salads, please.
Similarly, if 'smoke' means cigarette it is countable. If 'smoke' refers to the vapour given off by burning substances it is not.
Give us a smoke, will you?
Smoke from the forest fires could be seen from many miles away.
Sheep and deer are both countable. It just so happens that the form of the singular and plural are the same.
A sheep (deer) was grazing.
Six sheep (deer) were running across the field.
Bingley
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Wordwind found my post on the chiasmus site needlessly obscure, and asked for an explanation by pm. She thinks my reply might be of general interest and suggested I post it to the board. Here it is:
Sorry, I didn't mean to be obscure. Chiasmi is fine. The problem is the parallel with octopus. Chiasmos is a Greek 2nd declension noun, plural chiasmoi, Latinised and Anglicised as chiasmi. Fine. No problem. Unfortunately pous (foot -- the final element of octopus) is a 3rd declension noun. The plural is podes (think of all the pod words with foot meanings). So if one wants to use the Greek plural it would have to be octopodes. Better by far to treat it as an ordinary English noun -- octopuses.
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far better ... octopuses. Ooh, no I like octopodes better it sounds more octopus movementish to me.
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octopodes
Yeahbut®, is it OCK tuh poads, or ock TAH puh deez?
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ock TAH puh deez in the Antipodes but OCK tuh poads elsewhere
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ock TAH puh deez in the Antipodes and also for Euripedes.
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Nope, it wouldn't be "ock TAH puh deez" up here, you would have to replace that "AH" with our favourite, (almost our only) vowel, a schwa. 
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replace that "AH" with … a schwa
A *stressed schwa!?
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>A *stressed schwa!?
Sure, up here they're all stressed from being so overworked.
Aks shirley, we're known for rising intonation, and, IMHO, we don't stress that syllable. Having said the word dozens of times in the last few minutes, I'm stil convinced it's a schwa there - the word comes out like "an-tschwa-pscwha-DEEZ.
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Not to change the subject--you all keep schwahing and octopodeaning all you want--but I began to think about sjmaxq's observations on the aesthetic appeal of millennia, and I began to wonder about pandemonium:
So I looked it up on onelook.com. It appears to be a regular old noun. One pandemonium--and I suppose one could be pressed to visit several pandemoniums. There wasn't a single listing of 'pandemonia.' Why not? (I know this is going to be one of those Greek explanations, but please do go ahead.)
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Google shows 1400 hits on pandemonia but they seem to have other excuses for being* than being the plural of pandemonium. Pandemonium is one of those uncountable thangs. Either it's there or it ain't. It's not even like you'd say there was a pandemonium in the marketplace yesterday. With the one we had in the Forum last week, that's two pandemonia this month alone.
*One hit was a reference to Prehysterical Pogo (in Pandemonia) and there's apparently a computer game Pandemonia. There was also a reference to what may be a goddess named Pandemonia, but that would be feminine singular, not neuter plural.
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As you say, it doesn't really pluralise very easily. A quick look at Google suggests that pandemoniums is usually an error for pandemonium's.
The word was coined (sounds so much nicer than made up, doesn't it?) by Milton as the name of the city of all demons in his description of Hell in Paradise Lost.
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the city of all demons
Of course! [slaps palm to forehead] Very cool, Bingley. Thanks for that.
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Pandemonium = the city of all demons? Cool! [admiring look e]
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Same same in Eric by Terry Pratchett, which, coincidentally, I just started reading last night. My library doesn't have many of the discworld series. Any recommendations? The ones I remember seeing were Reaper Man, Small Gods, Interesting Times, Soul Music, Maskerade, The Last Continent, The Last Hero There may have been a few more but that's all I can remember.
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"Guards, Guards, Guards" the City Watch trilogy, and Pyramids. I'm a fan of anyone who can come up with Carpe Jugulum as the family motto of a vampire!
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Just remembered a personal bug bear. one person, two people. So where did we come up many persons. It has the same numerical sense and Onelook defines it as the formal or legal plural but it lacks the idea of group or inclusiveness that people contains. I hear it more and more in sentances that used to use people or other substitutes eg any persons arriving rather than any people or anyone. It seems to emphasize the separateness of those involved, a cold word to my mind, not used for it's formal meening but as a symptom of the decreasing connectedness we see today. [stepping down of soapbox e]
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They *are different words. Why one should be the plural of the other I don't know. I think historically the term people (fr. Latin populus{singular!}) has connoted a greater degree of unity among its members. Or else people would refer to the group and persons to the individual members of the group.
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They are differsnt words Understood, but I still find the change in popular usage an interesting if rather sad reflection of society by its language.
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sad reflection of society
Do you not hear people at all? I should think that limiting the usage of people to mean the group and persons to mean the members of the group would be a useful distinction. I don't know if it is being used that way, but I would rather hear that sort of distinction being made than just accepting the idea that it's one person, two or more people.
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I do here "people' but I often here them say persons where I would find people more appropriate. Eg. making a reservation and hearing "How many persons in the party?" I can't think of a specific instance at the moment, unfortunately.
I think if they didn't use the words as interchangable it wouldn't bug me.
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I associate the use of persons outside a legal context with speakers/writers from the USA, and somewhat less definitely with attempts to avoid sexist language.
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Same in Eric by Terry Pratchett, which, coincidentally, I just started reading last night. My library doesn't have many of the discworld series. Any recommendations? ~ consuelo
He has written a lot of discworld books now. Some time since I read it, but I liked 'Small Gods'. The concept of gods competing for worshippers in order to increase their power is maybe not new but he puts some interesting twists in there.
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