Showing posts with label plural forms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plural forms. Show all posts

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Pronouns Playing with Plurals

I couldn't resist throwing a bit of alliteration into the title for the added wordplay effect.


Thank you, Steve, for bringing this comic to my attention.

Comic by Jesse Tahirali.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Apostrophe Errors Part 2 - Ladie's Room

The sign for the women's restroom at one of our local taverns is a plaque that reads "women", unfortunately, a holiday wreath is covering the regular sign so the sign pictured below has been placed on the door temporarily. I have stopped having a beer with my burger during the holidays.


For more on restroom apostrophe errors click here.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The Plural of Mongoose - Mongooses or Mongeese

The manager of a large city zoo was drafting a letter to order a pair of animals. He sat at his computer and typed the following sentence: "I would like to place an order for two mongooses, to be delivered at your earliest convenience."
He stared at the screen, focusing on that odd word mongooses. Then he deleted the word and added another, so that the sentence now read: "I would like to place an order for two mongeese, to be delivered at your earliest convenience."
Again he stared at the screen, this time focusing on the new word, which seemed just as odd as the original one. Finally, he deleted the whole sentence and started all over. "Everyone knows no full-stocked zoo should be without a mongoose," he typed. "Please send us two of them."

According to Dictionary.com and the American Heritage Dictionary the plural of mongoose is mongooses which makes sense because etymologically there is no relation to the word goose. The word mongoose comes from mangus, a word from the Indic language Marathi.

Interestingly, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary does include mongeese as an accepted plural form. This is likely because of its repeated usage by people unfamiliar with the etymology of mongoose.

To learn more about what qualifies a word for dictionary inclusion please refer to the previous post on this topic.
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