Plural forms of nouns which do not end in ‘s’
Some plural forms of nouns in English do NOT end in ‘s’.
Here are some of the most common irregular plural forms:
- one man ➞ two men
- one woman ➞ two women
- one child ➞ two children
- one foot ➞ two feet
- one sheep ➞ two sheep
- one tooth ➞ two teeth
- one person ➞ two people
- one fish ➞ two fish (or fishes)
Russell - August 18, 2017, 9:53 am
information > information
equipment > equipment
Anonymous - September 2, 2018, 3:19 am
‘Information’, ‘equipment’ and others listed here are uncountable nouns and cannot be plural by their selves without quantifiers. These aren’t examples of plural nouns with ‘s’ like words such as ‘children’ or ‘sheep’
Anonymous - November 28, 2018, 6:24 am
“some of the most common”
Anonymous - September 24, 2022, 7:16 pm
I always used to say “informationS” lol
Stuart Cook - October 20, 2022, 6:01 am
A lot of learners make that mistake! Just ‘information’, without an ‘s’.
temp - December 4, 2017, 1:04 pm
It’s not Informations, its information.
It’s not equipments, it’s equipment.
It’s not furnitures, its furniture.
Similarly, few words i could remember,
It’s not dirts, it’s dirt.
It’s not datas, it’s data.
Or you could say, the meaning stays,
A piece of information OR some information.
A piece of equipment
A piece of furniture.
and so on..
Xavier - September 3, 2020, 2:17 am
Data is already plural. The singular is datum.
Anonymous - September 17, 2020, 12:05 am
thank you very much I was confused
Alex F. - December 8, 2020, 5:29 am
You mean plural nouns without ‘s’, as your examples do not have ‘s’.
Alex F. - December 8, 2020, 5:39 am
It can, technically, be used as plural. But outside of more specialized fields like science, mathematics or financial writing, data is overwhelmingly a mass noun in English. The plural insistence seems to largely stem from a connection to Latin. But why insist on holding onto a usage from a different, and dead, language rather than the one your are using the word in? It is not wrong to use data in the plural in English (‘data are….’), but it is certainly incorrect to claim it is only, or already, plural in general. And ‘datum’ is a specialized term also used pretty exclusively as well, as ‘data’ is in the plural. [Link deleted]
Anonymous - October 30, 2020, 5:27 pm
These are non-count nouns- they don’t have “s”, so the only way to count them is to use a count noun: one piece of furniture/ two pieces of furniture, etc.
Other examples of non-count nouns are: money, water, rice, jewellery, paper, metal, plastic, cereal and so on.
Vera Canazio - March 22, 2018, 5:15 pm
I am flabbergasted at what you are providing me with. Million thanks
Anonymous - October 10, 2018, 8:57 pm
Goose/Geese
Anonymous - November 13, 2019, 11:59 pm
furniture>furniture
Anonymous - November 20, 2019, 2:20 pm
Stadium – Stadia
Geoff Peirse - January 4, 2020, 10:06 am
YOU is the plural of YOU. Many people in the UK say YOUS fof example merry Christmas fo YOUS all instead of YOU all. This is really anoying.
Anonymous - October 17, 2021, 6:01 pm
nobody says that but I get yous point ; )
Anonymous - August 9, 2022, 2:52 pm
I believe it is used more often by the Irish, rather than the English. I have only hear English people say it a couple of times in my life. I’m personally a fan of having a plural “you”. “Yous” isn’t the best, neither is “y’all”
I might stick with “Ye”
Randy - January 5, 2024, 10:19 am
Y’all is a contraction and not a plural. I associate y’all with the American south. Yous just makes my skin crawl. It sounds very uneducated to me.
Randy - January 5, 2024, 10:42 am
This is very good. However in the case of FBI agent, my thought is that it would be an FBI agent as you’re talking about an agent. FBI only acts as an adjective in this case. But, this would not always be the rule as it would be proper to say a red apple or an apple.
Ben - May 25, 2020, 12:44 pm
Does anyone knows what the plural of vocab or vocabulary? I want to clear this very bit.
In the past, I usually would say vocabs or vocabularies. However, I was advised that it was incorrect. So, my thinking now is vocab and vocabulary for one or many. I am still not 100% correct which way.
I am fully aware about furniture, sheep etc being singular or plural. Just vocab/vocabulary has gotten me stumped atm.
Xavier - September 3, 2020, 2:16 am
What if there are different speakers? Each with a different vocabulary. They would have different vocabularies.
Randy - January 5, 2024, 10:26 am
My Spanish vocabulary is very different from my English vocabulary. Therefore, the two vocabularies are different. If I were better educated, I would guess that vocab is only a shortened version of vocabulary and probably has no correct usage..
naman - June 21, 2020, 9:13 am
very nice got praised by teacher I am a small boy in grade 5 thank u whoever made this
Anonymous - October 22, 2020, 7:40 pm
Criterion – criteria
Anonymous - June 5, 2021, 2:03 pm
Which one is correct grammatically and why?
1- It’s a four hour job.
2- It’s a four hours job.
Thank you.
sarath from Sri Lanka - October 30, 2021, 2:14 pm
the common usage is that we do not use “s” with the nouns that is preceded by a number like two, three, four etc.
“it’s a four hour job” is the correct one.
Elizabeth Andrews - December 5, 2021, 5:48 pm
Should be hyphenated when used adjectivally: It’s a four-hour job
Randy - January 5, 2024, 10:29 am
Correct. It is a four-hour job.
Alfred Gbano - October 29, 2021, 5:30 pm
Number one is correct. It’s a four hours job
Lhilo kronu - January 11, 2022, 8:33 am
How to use ‘an’ before words. Some words not apply ‘an’ even vowels word seem in the first letter.
Anonymous - August 9, 2022, 3:15 pm
of course, there are exceptions, however, generally..
If the word stats with a vowel sound, you use “an”, otherwise you use “a”
A banana
A chipmunk
A donkey
A one (yep, look at that… it starts with a ‘w’ sound, not an ‘o’)
An apple
An elephant
An idiot
An Octopus
The letter ‘U’ becomes a bit tricky..
If it’s a short U, (likely a schwa), it’s ‘an’
An umbrella
An undersore
If it’s a long U sound (OO), then, you are probably back to using “a”.
A uniform
A use
A utility
Even words not starting with the letter you fall under this.
A ewe
A eulogy
A European
Also, Initialisms are controversial. Typically in professional writing, even though initialisms are individually spoken letters (FBI, LBW, NCIS, etc…) and you’d think it would be ‘an FBI agent’, in professional writing, since FBI is simply shortening the full name, they will (sometimes) use an ‘a’, since it would be “a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent”.
I don’t see those last ones often, but when I do, it’s often in top tier newspapers, journals, etc.
That’s the best I can describe it.
Conan the grammarian - November 23, 2024, 2:29 pm
And when we speak of an individual letter, it varies by how we pronounce each letter.
We say “an A” when referring to the letter
We say “a B” when referring to the letter
We say “a C” when referring to the letter
We say “a D” when referring to the letter
We say “an E” when referring to the letter
We say “an F” when referring to the letter
We say “a G” when referring to the letter
We say “an H” when referring to the letter
And so on through the alphabet. If the spoken form of the individual letter begins with a vowel sound, then we use “an” before it. However, if the spoken form begins with a consonant sound, then we switch to using “a” instead. Also common in the spoken form is to pronounce the articles “a” and “an” as “uh” and “un” with a schwa sound or close to it. This helps our ears to distinguish between the article and the letter being addressed. The written form of the language does not worry as much about pronunciation of the articles however since it is not spoken (except in our heads at times). Good luck with our complicated language.
Lhilo kronu - January 11, 2022, 8:35 am
How to use ‘an’ before words.
cassandra catamora - March 24, 2022, 6:36 am
thax its a big help to me
Perry - September 5, 2022, 4:38 pm
Brick or bricks
Anonymous - November 19, 2022, 7:16 pm
Singular: brick
I have a brick.
Plural: bricks
I have many bricks.
If you’re using it as an adjective, however, use the singular form.
I built a brick house.
Conan the grammarian - November 23, 2024, 2:36 pm
And we could also say “they built the house out of bricks” but in the case of a wood house, “they built the house out of wood” to further confuse us all. Good luck with using our complicated language.
Anonymous - September 8, 2023, 11:23 am
I WOULD NEED MORE PLURAL NOUNS NOT ENDING IN S.
Dave - September 13, 2024, 5:56 am
“Sons of bitches” is a double indemnity plural.