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Chris -- 2018-04-11
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I’ve noticed these words every great once in a while and they mess with my mind… and for some reason while I could remember the phenomenon, I couldn’t remember examples… but I just came across one again.
Sud. There are suds, but there is no sud. I can find no indication that sud is considered a word, at least as the singular of suds. Possibly because while you can have a bunch of suds, it’s not really possible to have just one sud.
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Troops, I think, used to be like that, did it not? But I have started occasionally hearing “troop” for one soldier. (Of course, it is singular when it means “an assemblage of people, i.e., band, or a cavalry unit.) I’m not sure if that is exactly what you had in mind, but it came to me when I saw the topic. I’m sure I’ll think of more too.
Feeling quite combobulated.
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There is a short list of these plural-no-singular nouns at http://www.lovetolearnplace.com/Grammar … nouns.html
On the list at the site are the words scissors, oats, tongs, dregs, trousers, pinchers, bellows, snuffers, cattle, shears, measles, mumps, victuals, tweezers, vespers. Note that many of these words designate things that come in pairs (e.g., scissors).
Last edited by kem (2015-03-18 13:50:24)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Grits (the corn meal dish). The OED lists this as a “plural noun [also treated as sing. ]” There’s an old joke that reads something like, “Grits is good and toast are too!”
Panties. The late George Carlin once quipped something to the effect, “Why do panties always come in pairs and yet, a brassiere is singular?â€
Last edited by rogerthat (2008-07-16 11:54:56)
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One another thread “dungarees” came up; there is a mass noun (neither singular nor plural) “dungaree†meaning the type of cloth dungarees are made of.
A lot of clothing nouns fit here, but people in the clothing industry seem to backform singulars off them pretty freely. “This pant”, “a red trouser”, “that panty”, etc. No doubt somebody says “a dungaree”. Of course some that are almost always plural are still quite unexceptionable in singular: e.g. “a sneaker” is fine, though I’m sure that 95 times out of a hundred I would talk about sneakers. Some clothing nouns that used to be strongly plural for me are less so now: e.g. “she was wearing a culotte” sounds as good as “she was wearing culottes”.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Since you mentioned dungarees, David, it made me think of “jeans.” So jeans, pants, trousers, shorts, bloomers, panties, slacks, boxers, bib overalls, long johns. Anything we wear over our legs and/or lower torsos apparently is rarely used in singular form, at least us regular Joes who don’t work in the fashion industry. (The exception is underwear.)
Last edited by JonW719 (2008-07-16 15:20:10)
Feeling quite combobulated.
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Even underwear: unders, briefs, boxers, panties, tightie-whities, depends, swimming trunks … Not thongs, though. Diapers probably refers to the serial plurality (“he’s still in diapers†doesn’t mean he’s wearing more than one diaper at a time.)
Off-topic: just remembering the joke about the sophomore holding forth on the idiocy of naming clothing with -er on a verb of associated activity: “Do you wear a sweater whenever you sweat? or sneakers when you sneak? Do you have to wear pedal-pushers to push pedals, or a jumper if you are going to jump?” A freshman interrupts, “All the same, if you don’t mind, could you take off that wind-breaker?”
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-16 19:09:43)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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“Hose” is an interesting one. I think it wasn’t till I found “sleeve” and “hose” being the same word in another language (cf. “sleeving”) that it hit me that the hose ladies wear is in some degree the same thing (named by the same word) as a garden hose. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used as a count noun. (“This hose”? No! “These hose”? Maaaybe. “These hoses?” No way! “This pair of hose?” Oh, yeah!) I think in old English it was also plural: didn’t they wear “hosen”?
Which reminds me: those plural leg-related-clothing nouns mostly collocate well with “a pair of” (trousers, shorts, swim-trunks, pants, ?!panties, ??briefs, ?*depends …). It is clearly a dual plurality. I seem to remember somebody joshingly referring to “your trouser” when the garment in question had one leg removed because the wearer had a full-length cast on his leg.
Note, “panty-hose”, not “panties-hose”. Several of the other-wise never-singular nouns can appear as singular (unmarked for number?) in compounds. Even “sud-producing” isn’t totally impossible for me, though “suds-producing” is better.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-16 19:25:13)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Is not a term that exists only in the plural (e.g. trousers) called a plurale tantum?
Gordon Balfour Haynes, professional verbivore, Australia
Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
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Yes, that’s the term.
Like most linguistic terms, the category it covers is not uniform, and it’s fun to poke around and find out what different kinds there are within it.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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some of these words “feel” different than others to me. Like pants, you can see how that came about, short for pantaloons, and having evolved from something that was in fact two separate items, leggings, that presumably could be referred to in the singular.
Others I question, like oats, I’ve heard of a single oat grain called an oat, and of course we use the word oat in phrases like “oat bran,” though that’s not usage as a singular in the current context.
Suds on the other hand seems to spring from nowhere… no possible etymological excuses like pants might have, and you never see “sud” used even in a similar context as you might hear the oat in oat bran.
Then I was thinking of the difference between these plurals and group names like “gaggle,” etc. They are also plurals with no singular in a sense… except that they ARE the singular for a unit. They can be pluralized, “gaggles,” but in the sense that they are plural, they can’t be made singular. One goose is not a gag.
Thinking about this stuff might be a sign of obsessive compulsive behavior.
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Thinking about this stuff might be a sign of obsessive compulsive behavior.
Most of us on this forum crossed that line so long ago that we can’t even see it in the rear view mirror.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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