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tuhin Offline OP
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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

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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.)


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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. 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.

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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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Quote:


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?

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My dictionary software, Babylon, confirms that "poetries" is no solecism.

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plural poetry == poetry slam

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The problem isn't the plural per se; it's that the plural changes the meaning of the noun radically.

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Zed Offline
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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.

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Doesn't poesy cover tuhin's question?

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