The English language is like an old friend with a habit of playing horrible pranks: no matter how much you enjoy its company, it’ll eventually surprise you with something unpleasant.
Like covering your desk in cling wrap. [Photo: Matt Reinbold/flickr]Irregular plurals, for instance, are words that defy normal spelling rules, as if designed to catch people out! Luckily, there are some guidelines to help you spell them correctly.
Irregular plurals don’t follow the normal convention of adding an ‘-s’ when forming a plural (e.g. like how ‘plural’ becomes ‘plurals’). The most common examples are words that end in a consonant plus ‘-y’, where the ‘-y’ changes to ‘-ies’ when pluralised (e.g. ‘lady’ becomes ‘ladies’).
But there are lots of other irregular plurals. The following, for example…
Most words that end in ‘-o’ simply require adding an ‘-s’ to form the plural (e.g. ‘hippo’ → ‘hippos’), but some take ‘-oes’ instead, such as when ‘hero’ becomes ‘heroes’. Others include:
Singular
Plural
Potato
Potatoes
Echo
Echoes
Torpedo
Torpedoes
Similarly, words which end with ‘-a’ are sometimes spelled with ‘-ae’ when pluralised:
Formula
Formulae
Vertebra
Vertebrae
Antenna
Antennae
In some cases this is a matter of choice, however, as modern conventions may permit alternatives, such as when ‘antenna’ is pluralised as ‘antennas’.
Words that end ‘-f’ or ‘-fe’ are usually spelled with a ‘-ves’ in plural form. For instance:
Knife
Knives
Elf
Elves
Life
Lives
One important exception is when a word ends ‘-ff’, in which case you simply add an ‘-s’ to make a plural (e.g. ‘quiff’ → ‘quiffs’).
Words ending ‘-is’ in the singular generally take ‘-es’ when pluralised. This includes:
Analysis
Analyses
Thesis
Theses
Diagnosis
Diagnoses
Terms that end either ‘-ix’ or ‘-ex’ are traditionally spelled with ‘-ices’ when pluralised:
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Index
Indices
Appendix
Appendices
Matrix
Matrices
However, in recent years, regular plural versions of these words have become more common. You may therefore see other spellings used, such as ‘indexes’ and ‘appendixes’.
Additional word endings to look out for include ‘-on’ and ‘-um’, which are both often replaced with ‘-a’ in plurals (e.g. ‘medium’→ ‘media’), as well as ‘-us’, which changes to ‘-i’ (‘alumnus’ → ‘alumni’):
Phenomenon
Phenomena
Bacterium
Bacteria
Nucleus
Nuclei
To increase the confusion, some words change even more when pluralised:
Child
Children
Tooth
Teeth
Mouse
Mice
There’s no real pattern here; often it’s the vowel sound that changes (e.g. ‘tooth’ and ‘teeth’), but this isn’t always the case (e.g. ‘child’ and ‘children’).
Finally, some plurals are irregular because they don’t change at all when pluralised! A single ‘fish’, for instance, is spelled the same as when describing a ‘shoal of fish’. Other examples include ‘deer’, ‘offspring’ and ‘species’.
And don’t forget, if you struggle with spelling, getting your work proofread is a fantastic way of catching mistakes you might have missed.
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