I'm mostly with Goofy on this point, except that the sense of "obligation" rubs me a bit wrong: the question is (as it almost always should be), "What communicates smoothly and gets across the speaker's ideas - rather than draws attention to the
speaker's choice of strange and awkward words." Of course, we who come daily to "A.Word.A.Day" delight in messing with weird words (singular OR plural); our more
normal friends consider us "word weirdos", and we live with that. In this regard, I found taxis, congeries, shambles and kudos worth attention and study . . . but you want WEIRD? "STARETS" is a damned WEIRD RINGER and should NOT have been in this list! First, I don't see it in any modern English dictionary (yet it is in the now old Merriam Webster's 3rd Unabridged), nor is it in my Apple Dictionary (from the "Dock" at the side of my MacPro's screen, though it IS in Wikipedia (where it should be, but Wiki is not a dictionary). In Russian, the word is "старец" and means "elder". Note that last letter "ц": it is sounded like the "-ts" in "cats" and when transliterated makes "starets" looks as if the original word ends in "s", and will fool an innocent into supposing it might be a plural. There is not even the sound of "s" in the original, and the word is therefore a RINGER. But worst of all, who has even heard of this silly word? Test: see if you have even 1 friend who knows it! Then, to cap the absurdity, we're supposed to know that the proper plural is "startsy": the absurdity progresses, because only those of us who have studied the Russian language will know how to form that plural. This word is worth attention in Russian, because "elders" enjoy a status over there which elders here absolutely do NOT enjoy...another reason that "starets" is a ringer, a weirdly-ringing ringer. Beck123 is obviously a conscientious person and wants to use proper plurals; will we find anyone who will teach Beck that it's "startsy"?
