Macmillan Holdings, LLC. Grammar Girl, Grammar Girl's, QDnow, and Quick and Dirty Tips are all trademarks of Macmillan Holdings, LLC. The Influence of Old English on Plurals. tim grammar My pet peeve is when people confuse the singular and plural forms of criterion and criteria, and other Greek words. The correct words are "one criterion" and "several criteria". http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=16326#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=16326#Comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:34:59 GMT sadie smith grammar what is the plurals in german and german animals http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=16256#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=16256#Comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:44:04 GMT Art grammar Tim is right that "children" is a double plural. Same for "bretheren". The original plural of brother was brether. Regarding deer, sheep, swine, etc., this has nothing to do with collective nouns. Again from Old English, there was a class of mono-syllabic neuter nouns with long stem vowels. This class was marked by the lack of differentiation between the singular and plural (nominative and accusative forms only). Many animals fell into this class, but there were many others, as well. English later extended this lack of plural to other animals, such as moose and caribou. No one asked (or maybe it's in another post), but why is there no "s" in expressions such as ten-gallon tank, three-mile hike, 100-word essay? It's because these are also remnant forms from Old English. After numbers, the genitive plural form of the noun was used. Eventually the ending dropped leaving an uninflected noun. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=15633#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=15633#Comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:43:22 GMT Cuyler grammar I actually like the way irregular plurals sound and sometimes I think of how English might have extended the irregularities to other nouns, but didn't. For example, even though the words "goose" and "moose" sound similar, we might say "Look at all those geese!", we'd never say "What a large group of meese!". Likewise, since every leg of a moose has a "hoof", it normally has four "hooves", so shouldn't the plural of "roof" be "rooves"? And if "mouse" gives us "mice", why doesn't "house" pluralize to "hice"? Imagine saying something like, "All the town's hice had red rooves." http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14742#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14742#Comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:29:59 GMT Jill Young grammar Is men an irregular plural? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14741#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14741#Comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:28:36 GMT Ken grammar hi all, To provide a simple and a straight forward response to the inquiry. In normal English, the plural of a mouse will definitely have to be 'mice', however when referring to the 'mouse' used with our computers in technical documentation, my suggestion is to use 'mouse device'. therefore, the plural would become 'mouse devices'. this is also as per the Microsoft Manual for Technical Publications. i hope i have been of some help, regards, Ken http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14202#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14202#Comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:59:44 GMT Michael grammar In hacker days of yore, the DEC VAX computer was often pluralized, "VAXen" http://is.gd/36VV , then by extension, any UNIX box was pluralized "boxen". http://is.gd/36W3 http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14054#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14054#Comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:06:22 GMT Adam grammar There's another, less loved, way to form plurals. Consider criterion, and phenomenon; they use a rule derived from Greek. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14025#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=14025#Comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:21:14 GMT Tim grammar That should be "hear" and not "here". Oops. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=13997#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=13997#Comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:21:39 GMT Tim grammar I once read that the word Children is actually double pluralized. Child was originally pluralized as Childer which was later doubly pluralized as Children. It is not uncommon to here it triply pluralized as Childrens in some American dialects. So every time you think someone sounds uneducated because they say "Childrens", remember that you are using an identical mistake from centuries ago when you say "Children". http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=13996#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx?commentid=13996#Comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:20:10 GMT Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:34:59 GMT http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/the-plural-of-mouse.aspx feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Managing Editor) feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Webmaster) en-us