English plurals ending -en

[wjreid]

How many words in English have the plural ending -en. I heard there are three. Anyone help?

[Bluetonic]

one is women, then men, I don't know about a third, hope that helps!

[surabhi]

Isn't "children" the third one. Sorry just a guess

[Bluetonic]

yeah, I was thinking about this last night and worked it out. Then again, do words like 'firemen' count because of the prefix?

[Waterwolf]

There's another one: oxen. Can't think of any more though.

[Sam]

Brethren is another one, the olde English plural of brothers. I heard that the three were children, oxen and brethren, though I don't know how men and women fit into that...

[alphabeta77]

They are:

Children, Oxen and Brethren

Man->Men and Woman->Women
is an example of a process called Ablaut -
where the vowel inside the word is raised,
it is not an -en suffix (ie the singular of men is
certainly not 'M'!)  It fits with other ablaut fossils
such as foot, feet, goose geese etc

Children is actually an -en suffix despite the odd
'r' between the singular and plural forms - this is
actually a double-plural the singular 'child' was originally
pluralised as 'Childer', but being an unusual plural
speakers didn't realise and added another plural,

hence the true form is 3 morphemes child-er-en

 

Hope this helps!