Quizzes & Puzzles2 mins ago
If the plural of roof is roofs
31 Answers
(not rooves) which I think it is, shouldn't the plural of dwarf be dwarfs and not dwarves? Will someone clever at English please enlighten me?
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F30, the computing buss - which may also be spelt with a single 's' but rarely is - is also concerned with plurality. That is, it is so called apparently because it involves a NUMBER of conductors forming a circuit. It's a different sort of 'omnibus', in other words.
Re the idea that there is a "general rule" here, that's about as useful as most so-called 'rules' in English!
Re the idea that there is a "general rule" here, that's about as useful as most so-called 'rules' in English!
Boxtops, you're absolutely right in purely classical terms. However, stadiums is a perfectly acceptable plural form now according to both Chambers and the OED and the same applies to forums.
The singular 'datum' is most conspicuous by its absence in modern usage.
Re criterion, the OED says "plural criteria, less commonly - ons", so it clearly has been used as well.
Unfortunately, in many cases, pedantry has been no match for usage!
The singular 'datum' is most conspicuous by its absence in modern usage.
Re criterion, the OED says "plural criteria, less commonly - ons", so it clearly has been used as well.
Unfortunately, in many cases, pedantry has been no match for usage!
In early Old English, there WAS a different form of plural for sheep which would have been pronounced sheep-oo and in Northumbrian dialect it was sheep-oh. Both died out about a millennium ago.
One OED illustration for mongoose reads, "The mongoose is a troublesome sort of creature for nobody seems to know with any degree of certainty which to choose of his plural forms - mongooses, mongeese, mongoose or mongooze." (However, it also says, "The proper plural form is mongooses.")
What a glorious language, indeed!
One OED illustration for mongoose reads, "The mongoose is a troublesome sort of creature for nobody seems to know with any degree of certainty which to choose of his plural forms - mongooses, mongeese, mongoose or mongooze." (However, it also says, "The proper plural form is mongooses.")
What a glorious language, indeed!
Picking only a few nits concerning the word "bus"... factor was under the assumption that "bus" (as in multipassenger vehicle) was derived from omnibus is actually correct according to one source: "... bus is an excellent example of language evolution in action.
It started out in French in 1828 in its full form omnibus as part of the name for a new type of public transport that was open to everyone, of any social class. It was a long coach with seats down each side, which was called a voiture omnibus, a “carriage for everyone”, where omnibus is the dative plural of the Latin omnis, “all”, hence “for all”. (That classic Shakespearean stage direction, exeunt omnes, or “everybody leaves”, includes another form of the same word.)
The idea, and the word, were brought over almost immediately into England and into English. A London newsletter of 1829 noted that “The new vehicle, called the omnibus, commenced running this morning [4 July] from Paddington to the City”. As this shows, the French phrase was at once shortened (voiture was obviously foreign rubbish, but omnibus was classical and we could live with that). By 1832, it had been abbreviated further to the form we have today, bus, one of our weirder linguistic inventions, since it consists just of part of a Latin suffix, –ibus, with no root word in it at all. So immediate was the acceptance of omnibus into our language armoury that in 1831, only two years after its first use in English, Washington Irving could aim and fire it figuratively in reference to the Reform Bill: “The great reform omnibus moves but slowly”. (Source: World Wide Words).
It started out in French in 1828 in its full form omnibus as part of the name for a new type of public transport that was open to everyone, of any social class. It was a long coach with seats down each side, which was called a voiture omnibus, a “carriage for everyone”, where omnibus is the dative plural of the Latin omnis, “all”, hence “for all”. (That classic Shakespearean stage direction, exeunt omnes, or “everybody leaves”, includes another form of the same word.)
The idea, and the word, were brought over almost immediately into England and into English. A London newsletter of 1829 noted that “The new vehicle, called the omnibus, commenced running this morning [4 July] from Paddington to the City”. As this shows, the French phrase was at once shortened (voiture was obviously foreign rubbish, but omnibus was classical and we could live with that). By 1832, it had been abbreviated further to the form we have today, bus, one of our weirder linguistic inventions, since it consists just of part of a Latin suffix, –ibus, with no root word in it at all. So immediate was the acceptance of omnibus into our language armoury that in 1831, only two years after its first use in English, Washington Irving could aim and fire it figuratively in reference to the Reform Bill: “The great reform omnibus moves but slowly”. (Source: World Wide Words).
Did you hear about the bloke who was writing a letter to the zoo? He wrote 'dear zoo, please send me two mongooses'. He thought it didn't look right, so started again, 'dear zoo, please send me two mongeese'. Hmm, he though, it's still not right. So he started again 'dear zoo, please send me a mongoose. PS please send another one. !
> It seems to me English has more irregularities than most other languages.
English is one of the easiest languages in the world to achieve basic fluency: there are no genders of nouns (like French le and la), no formal and informal (like French tu and vous) and, with only a very few exceptions, the verbs are extremely simple. Certainly, getting tenses wrong doesn't render things incomprehensible, like it does in many languages. If somebody says to you:
"Yesterday I go visit my mother"
"Today I go visit my mother"
"Tomorrow I go visit my mother"
it's not really a big problem for a native speaker to understand that the person went / is going / will go to visit their mother...
But at the same time, English is one of the hardest languages in the world to master. Non-native speakers have huge problems with prepositional and phrasal verbs which, more often than not, mean very different (even opposite) things depending on context:
http://www.englisch-h...mar/phrasal_verbs.htm
English is one of the easiest languages in the world to achieve basic fluency: there are no genders of nouns (like French le and la), no formal and informal (like French tu and vous) and, with only a very few exceptions, the verbs are extremely simple. Certainly, getting tenses wrong doesn't render things incomprehensible, like it does in many languages. If somebody says to you:
"Yesterday I go visit my mother"
"Today I go visit my mother"
"Tomorrow I go visit my mother"
it's not really a big problem for a native speaker to understand that the person went / is going / will go to visit their mother...
But at the same time, English is one of the hardest languages in the world to master. Non-native speakers have huge problems with prepositional and phrasal verbs which, more often than not, mean very different (even opposite) things depending on context:
http://www.englisch-h...mar/phrasal_verbs.htm
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