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Clothes, clothing - uncountable?

2 replies
:
"clothes" and "clothing", are they countable or uncountable nouns?
Do you say "How many/much clothes/cloth are/is in your wardrobe?" and "How many/much clothings/clothing are/in in your wardrobe?"
thanks.
Junior Member98
:
Ter"clothes" and "clothing", are they countable or uncountable nouns? '(Clothing' is uncountable; 'clothes' is countable.)

Do you say "How many/much clothes/cloth are/is in your wardrobe?" and "How many/much clothings/clothing are/in in your wardrobe?"

thanks.

How many clothes are there in your wardrobe?

"How many/much clothings/clothing are/in in your wardrobe?" (''Clothing' is uncountable, so the sentence is not correct.)
Veteran Member7,528
Anonymous:
Clothing is definitely an uncountable noun, like all gerunds ( "ing" verbs, shopping, thinking etc. )

Clothes I´m not so sure. Looking around on the net, people seem to be saying it´s countable, but that you can find uses of both. However, I would never say...

"I have 4 clothes."

I would have to say,

"I have 4 articles of clothing," although this sounds very formal.

Therefore I would have to conclude clothes is non-countable too.

In answer to your initial question, if it´s non-countable, it has to be...

"How much clothes is there?"

I must admit though, now that I´m overthinking it, neither sounds correct and I would be very interested to hear anyone elses opinion on this. I suspect the ambiguity arises because clothes probably used to be the plural of cloth, but is not really thought about like that any more. Many nouns can be both depending on the context.

e.g. Someone might ask, "Is there much juice in the fridge?"

but a waiter might confirm an order with, "Right, so that´s 5 juices."
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