re: Singular & Plural Words? page 7

GuestWhat is the correct plural form for octopus

Octopi.

What about Knife Knives or Wife Wives???? Also Woman Women??? I don't believe there is a simple rule to do this programatically. You may want to maintain a dictionary and lookup plurals...

Youth - singular or plural? The Oxford Dictionary states 'youths' for plural. Does this help?

If you have time to read - David Crystal's The Stories of English is a highly readable, erudite and fascinating account of the development of English which has helped answer many questions about anomalies in the English language.

"Youth" is the state of being young. "A youth" is a young male.

"Youth" is usually uncountable:

1. My prime of youth is but a frost of cares.

Though in very rare and mostly highly stylized contexts, you can treat it as countable, in the sense of "periods when we were young":

2. Our youths were all ill-spent, unfortunately.

"Youth" as in young male is countable in all circumstances:

3. There were three vile pustular youths loitering in the subway.

As for "octopi", it's a false plural, as the "-pus" ending in this instance derives from the Greek "pous" (= foot), the plural of which isn't "pi'", but "podes".

However, it's an error that has survived several centuries of correction, so a post on an ESL forum isn't going to change anything.

MrP

I suppose that we'll have to blame California's public school system for my error.

Sorry, 123, that was rude of me!

movie berry

'Spacecraft' is both the singular and plural form.

"Beer" is both a countable and mass noun.

E.g. He is drinking beer. (mass noun)

We have a good range of beers. (countable noun)