Singular nouns refer to a single person, thing, place, or idea. Plural nouns mean more than one person, thing, place, or idea. For most regular nouns, it is sufficient to add the letter -s to the end of this name to make them plural.
Examples:
Cat → cats
Rose → roses
Seed → seeds
House→ houses
∗ Nouns are made plural by adding “-s, -es, -ies” suffixes according to which sound they end with.
- Words ending with “s, z, x, sh, ch” become plural by taking the suffix -es.
Examples:
Box → boxes
Wish → wishes
Bus → buses
Peach → peaches
There are always exceptions. The words tomato, and potato are made plural by taking -es together with a few more words: tomatoes, potatoes, heroes, echoes, and torpedoes.
- While the words ending with the consonant “y” are made plural, the letter “y” at the end is converted to “i” and they become plural by taking the suffix -ies.
Examples:
Candy→ candies
Fairy → fairies
Baby → babies
City → cities
- For words with “f” before the last letter, “f” is converted to the letter “v” and -s is added to the end.
Examples:
Life→ candies
Wife → fairies
Knife → babies
∗ For those whose last letter is “f”, the letter “f” is converted to the letter “v” and -es is added to the end.
Examples:
Loaf→ loaves
Leaf → leaves
Elf → elves
Half → halves
∗ In words ending with a consonant “s” and the letter before the last letter is “i”, the letter “i” is converted to the letter “e”. In short, we don’t add “-es” to the end, but we convert the last two letters to “-es”.
Examples:
Diagnosis → diagnoses
Thesis → theses
Analysis → analyses
Crisis → crises
Oasis→ oases
Irregular Plurals
∗ Irregular nouns mean nouns that are not plural with an -s suffix, but whose plural form is a completely different word. Irregular plurals need to be memorized from lists or acquired over time.
List of Irregular Plurals
Man→ men
Woman → women
Tooth→ teeth
Child → children
Person→ people
Foot → feet
Mouse→ mice
Goose → geese
Ox→ oxen
Cactus → cacti
Fungus → fungi
Focus→ crises
Nucleus → nuclei
Datum → data
Criterion→ criteria
Phenomenon→ phenomena
Die→ dice
∗ There are also irregular words that have the same singular and plural form.
Examples:
Sheep → diagnoses
Fish→ theses
Deer → analyses
Species → crises
Aircraft→ oases
∗ The other interesting thing is that some nouns are always plural, and some are always singular.
Always plural: scissors, shorts, pants, trousers, jeans.
Always singular: love, news, livestock, bravery, money, slang, darts, athletics.
The Answer Key: babies, roses, leaves, bags, sheep, tomatoes.