Here's a good one. There is a link within to an early 20th century journal article on the issue as well, if you'd prefer something more academic and closer to the Victorian era.

From the article:

When I was young I had this Who poster on my bedroom wall commemorating their famous gig at Leeds:




When she came to stay my grandmother (who would have had no idea who The Who were) took my room, and over breakfast next morning insisted it should be "Lives".

(Irrelevant to this debate but amusing anyway)

Hitchcock's promo for The Birds was "The Birds Is Coming." One young guy from advertising said it should be, of course, "The Birds Are Coming." Hitchcock wasn't impressed.

What's the plural of Jazz supposed to be? We don't say "jazzes" unless we mean that in a verb.

What's really wrong is that the Jazz is in a state you'd least likely associate with jazz. The team originated in New Orleans, which makes sense there.

You also have teams like the Magic, Heat, Lightening, Thunder, Avalanche, etc, which have no plurals.

If nouns end in "s" or "z" they tend to be treated by Americans as though they were plural when deciding whether to use "is" or "are". Jazz is a mass noun, it's singular by nature, it has no plural form. There are lots of them in English, for example furniture, or a couple examples you gave (thunder and lightning).

Avalanche certainly has a plural though (avalanches) and magic doesn't in modern usage but "magics" was used archaically.

Trivia about a similar word: "mathematics" was originally a plural, but these days is treated as a singular mass noun (we say "mathematics IS my best subject"). In British English we shorten it to "maths", retaining the "s" as when plural nouns are abbreviated. Americans use "math", following the modern usage of a singular mass noun. American usage is arguably more correct and in keeping with similar words (for instance, "gymnastics" would be shortened to "gym" in British English, not "gyms").

In the US, "gym" can mean any activity that is physical and done in a building. "Going to the gym" usually means lifting weights (if you are a guy), doing yoga (if you are a woman), or taking a shower (if you're driving cross country), but it can also be swimming, indoor running, racquetball, playing basketball, and so on.

The shortened form of gymnasiums is gyms, but only speaks about the buildings.

I"m not sure about shortening mathematics to math. Maths sounds odd, but considering how many barely-related branches of math there are, using the singular to describe it all does feel a bit wrong.

Mathematics isn't plural any more than physics, economics, ethics, linguistics, etc.

Here's a linguist with a cool explanation:


(skip the first 10 seconds)

Oxford Dictionary:



The other words you mention also were once considered plural. In fact, the singular word "ethic" still exists, although "ethics" in the sense of the field of study is no longer considered the plural of it.

The linguist, btw, is saying exactly what I posted, which is that the word is in every other respect considered singular today and that "maths" is an inconsistency in that regard. She sort of sidesteps the question of how the word came to be. The Oxford etymology shows it coming into English via Old French, and in French, the word "mathématiques" is to this day considered plural even though the singular form is not used. It is "les mathématiques" not "la mathématiques" and takes plural verbs.

In my research of this stuff (because linguistics is a subject i enjoy) I've learned some interesting stuff. Like apparently Aussies shorten 'economics' to 'econs'. As in, 'My favorite class is econs 101'. That doesn't make 'economics' plural though.

Pre-WWII Brits would have said 'math' as often as 'maths'. 'Maths' won out because apparently it is easier for them to say (somehow??). Apparently Brits think that ending a word with a 'harsh "th" sound' is hard somehow. The opposite is true for my American tongue, where transitioning a 'th' straight into an 's' is awkward. So both groups went with the word that is easier for them to say.

Neither side EVER thought 'mathematics' was plural, however. "Mathematics is plural" is just a folk etymology for why they say 'maths' when exposed to Americans saying 'math'.

Brits/Aussies say 'maths is fun', not 'maths are fun'. You don't have 1 mathematic, 2 mathematics. You don't have 1 economic, 2 economics.

When does she say anything like that? She says the opposite. 'The verb (you use) is the smoking gun'.

She addresses why the 's' is on the end of the word. She says in Greek (although i think it is Latin) it was plural because it meant something like 'all the mathematical stuff'. In English these words quickly evolved to mean 'the study of X'.

So both the English and Americans treat it the same: mathematics is a plural noun but treated as singular.

In the same way, a little study of the history of English teaches us not to fume when someone pronounces "ask" as "aks." It easier to say, and we've seen the same transformation with brid/bird, hros/horse, and others.

Am Aussie and have never heard "econs", it's "econ", but maybe it varies by state. It's also only ever used in the context of university subjects. Other subject-specific abbreviations exist, for instance "chem" for chemistry and "eng", with a soft g, for engineering. (Although "engie" for engineer is in common use).

Bro I just cited the Oxford English Dictionary with PLURAL NOUN right there, you can't just continue calling this a "folk etymology".

It came into Latin from Greek. She said mathematics came into English and "quickly" became treated as singular. "Quickly" there is doing a lot of work. Here are some citations from Wiktionary from the 18th and 19th century of "mathematics" being used as plural:

Maybe you're having trouble with the idea of a plural noun which does not have a singular. There are still plenty of those in English, for example trousers, scissors, clothes, sunglasses, amends ("amend" is a verb but never used as a noun). Weird when you think about it that we don't say "Where is the scissors?", right?

I will agree that by the time "maths" arose, "mathematics" had not been treated as plural for some time.

Weird when I start thinking about the specificity of some of our diminutives. Doctors get their qualification at "med school" (i.e. medical), that is universally understood, but that abbreviation is also never used any other way. People would think it was very weird if you tried to call someone a "med doctor" or refer to "med research" or anything like that.

Good post, but one of those still has a singular form in use. You just don't think of it as the same thing. Surely, you have a cloth, such as a washcloth around, and if your S.O. sews, you might have a whole bunch of cloth. Oddly, it is not used for an item of clothing anymore, and the other plural (cloths) is used for cloth that is not wearable.

It's odd to be in the middle of plural changes. When I was a kid, the plural of dwarf was always dwarves. These days, my spell-check doesn't even recognize the word. I would say it wants me to use "dwarfs," but it doesn't even suggest that. It thought I was trying to spell "adwares." As far as I'm concerned, "dwarfs" is a third-person singular conjugation of a verb.

Here's something from the Oxford Dictionary website:
[URL="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/matching-verbs-to-collective-nouns"[/URL]

Though it's not mentioned in this explanation, it's my belief that in UK use there is usually a distinction between the group acting collectively and the group not having unity in some way. "The whole family was at the table" versus "The whole family were arguing."

A little googling reveals that "dwarfs" has always been the correct plural. Dwarves was popularized (though not invented) by Tolkien. Here's a Google ngram graph demonstrating this:



Tolkien wrote about it in one of his Letters:

As far as I know, there was no reason why the plural was dwarfs, just as there's no reason the plural of chief is chiefs and not chieves. These days some dictionaries consider "dwarves" acceptable for the fantasy creatures, but it's still definitively wrong in astronomy; it's always "white dwarfs".

Thanks.

I've heard attorneys refer to medical malpractice as med mal (e.g., "He specializes in med mal").

I took a couple of 600-level 'Med Chem' (medicinal chemistry) classes.

Interesting. As LotR was the first book I ever read, that may well be the big influencer for me. I definitely agree that the astronomical usage has always been "dwarfs," though I never noted the incongruity.

I've noticed a similar move from hooves to hoofs lately. My spellcheck seems to be fine with both.

Opinions, please, on


"I have three brothers and/but no sister"


vs.



"I have three brothers and/but no sisters"]

Both seem fine. The second seems to flow better.

The bigger problem here seems to be the jumping ahead of you, not her being over the item limit.