English Grammar, Singular/ Plural Nouns Worksheet #2

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.