Regular plurals The plural
morpheme in English is a sibilant
suffixed to the end of most nouns. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form:
Any sibilant In English, there are six
sibilant consonants: , , , , , and . When a singular noun ends in one of these sounds, its plural is spoken by appending or (in some transcription systems, this is abbreviated as ). The spelling adds
-es, or
-s if the singular already ends in
-e:
Other voiceless consonants In most English varieties, there are five non-sibilant voiceless consonants that occur at the end of words: , , , , and ; some varieties also have . When the singular form ends in a
voiceless consonant other than a sibilant, the plural is normally formed by adding (a voiceless sibilant). The spelling adds
-s: Some that end in or , however, are "near-regular". See section below.
Other voiced phonemes For a singular noun ending on a non-sibilant voiced consonant, the plural adds (a voiced sibilant) and the spelling adds
-s: In English, all vowels are voiced. Nouns ending in a vowel sound similarly add to form the plural. The spelling usually adds
-s, but certain instances (detailed below) may add
-es instead:
Plurals of nouns in -o preceded by a consonant Singular nouns ending in
o preceded by a
consonant in many cases spell the plural by adding
-es (pronounced ): However, many nouns of foreign origin, including almost all
Italian loanwords, add only
-s:
Plurals of nouns in -y Nouns ending in a vocalic
y (that is, used as a
vowel) preceded by a consonant usually drop the
y and add
-ies (pronounced , or in words where the y is pronounced ): Words ending in
quy also follow this pattern, since in English
qu is a digraph for two consonant sounds () or sometimes one (): However,
proper nouns (particularly names of people) of this type usually form their plurals by simply adding
-s:
the two Kennedys,
there are three Harrys in our office. With place names this rule is not always adhered to:
Sicilies and
Scillies are the standard plurals of
Sicily and
Scilly, while
Germanys and
Germanies are both used.''
Nor does the rule apply to words that are merely capitalized common nouns: P&O Ferries
(from ferry''). Other exceptions include
lay-bys and
stand-bys. Words ending in a
y preceded by a vowel form their plurals by adding
-s: However, the plural form (rarely used) of
money is usually
monies, although
moneys is also found. Also, the plural of
trolley can be either
trolleys or
trollies, although the former is more common.
Plurals of nouns in -i Nouns written with
-i usually have plurals in
-is but some in
-ies are also found.
Near-regular plurals In Old and Middle English, voiceless
fricatives and
mutated to voiced fricatives /v/ and /ð/ respectively before a voiced ending. In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of changing to , the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent
e is added in this case if the singular does not already end with
-e: In addition, there is one word where is voiced in the plural: Similarly, nearly all kinds of fish have no separate plural form (though there are exceptions—such as rays, sharks or lampreys). As to the word
fish itself, the plural is usually identical to the singular, although
fishes is sometimes used, especially when meaning "species of fish".
Fishes is also used in iconic contexts, such as the
Bible story of the
loaves and fishes, or the reference in
The Godfather, "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." The plurals of the names of fishes either take the ending -s or is the same as the singular. Other nouns that have identical singular and plural forms include: •
craft (meaning 'vessel'), including
aircraft,
watercraft,
spacecraft,
hovercraft (but in the sense of a skill or art, the plural is regular,
crafts) •
blues (referring to individual songs in the
blues musical style: "play me a blues"; "he sang three blues and a calypso") •
cannon (
cannons is more common in North America and Australia, while
cannon as plural is more common in the United Kingdom.) •
chassis (only the spelling is identical; the singular is pronounced while the plural is ) •
counsel (in the meaning of
lawyer) •
head (referring, in the plural, to animals in a herd: "fifty head of cattle": cf
brace above) •
iris (usually
irises, but
iris can be the plural for multiple plants; in medical contexts
irides is used, see below) •
series,
species (and other words in
-ies, from the Latin
fifth declension) [The word
specie refers only to money, coins, from the Latin ablative singular form in the phrase
in specie. It has no plural form.] •
stone—as a
unit of weight equal to 14 pounds (occasionally stones) Many names for
Native American peoples are not inflected in the plural: •
Cherokee •
Cree •
Comanche •
Delaware •
Hopi •
Iroquois •
Kiowa •
Navajo •
Ojibwa •
Sioux •
Zuni Exceptions include
Algonquins,
Apaches,
Aztecs,
Chippewas,
Hurons,
Incas,
Mohawks,
Oneidas, and
Seminoles. English sometimes distinguishes between regular plural forms of
demonyms/
ethnonyms (e.g. "five Dutchmen", "several Irishmen"), and uncountable plurals used to refer to entire nationalities collectively (e.g. "the Dutch", "the Irish"). Certain other words borrowed from foreign languages such as
Japanese and
Māori are "correctly" not inflected in the plural, although many people are not aware of this rule; see below.
Plurals in -(e)n The plurals of a few nouns are formed from the singular by adding
-n or
-en, stemming from the Old English weak declension. Only the following three are commonly found: As noted, the word "children" comes from an earlier form "childer". There were formerly a few other words like this: eyre/eyren (eggs), lamber/lambren (lambs), and calver/calveren (calves). An interesting example may be found embedded in the name of the London parish of
Clerkenwell, which derives its name from being the Clerks' Well associated with the
Clerkenwell Priory of the
Knights Hospitaller. The following
-(e)n plurals are found in dialectal, rare, or archaic usage: The word
box, referring to a computer, is sometimes pluralized humorously to
boxen in
hacker subculture, by analogy to
oxen. In the same context, multiple
VAX computers are sometimes called
Vaxen, particularly if operating as a cluster. Multiple Unix systems are sometimes referred to as
Unix boxen, or may be called
Unices along the
Latin model.
Apophonic plurals The plural is sometimes formed by changing the vowel sound of the singular (these are sometimes called
mutated plurals): This group consists of words that historically belong to the Old English consonant declension, see . There are many compounds of
man and
woman that form their plurals in the same way:
postmen,
policewomen, etc. The plural of
mongoose is
mongooses or sometimes
mongeese.
Mongeese is a back-formation by analogy to
goose /
geese and is often used in a jocular context. The form
meese is sometimes also used humorously as the plural of
moose—normally
moose or
mooses—or even of
mouse.
Miscellaneous irregular plurals Some words have irregular plurals that do not fit any of the types given here. •
person—
people (
suppletive; also regular
persons, in more formal (legal and technical) contexts;
people can also be a singular noun with plural
peoples.) •
die—
dice (
dice is the standard plural for
gaming dice, where it is often also used as the singular, and a variant plural for
integrated circuit dies; in other senses,
dies is used.) •
penny—
pence (as a fraction of a
pound unit of currency. The coin, worth one penny or one cent, has plural
pennies. Similarly for
halfpenny.
Decimalisation in 1968–1971 promoted use of "p" for "new penny/pence".)
Irregular plurals from foreign languages Irregular plurals from Latin and Greek English has borrowed a great many words from
Classical Latin and
Classical Greek. Classical Latin has a very complex system of endings in which there are five categories or
declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns (some with sub-categories). Usually, in borrowing words from Latin, the endings of the nominative are used: nouns whose nominative singular ends in
-a (
first declension) have plurals in
-ae (
anima,
animae); nouns whose nominative singular ends in
-um (
second declension neuter) have plurals in
-a (
stadium,
stadia;
datum,
data). (For a full treatment, see
Latin declensions.) Classical Greek has a simpler system, but still more complicated than that of English. Most loan words from Greek in English are from
Attic Greek (the Athenian Greek of
Plato,
Aristotle, and other great writers), not
Demotic Greek,
Koine (Biblical) Greek, or
Modern Greek. This is because Attic Greek is what is taught in classes in Greek in Western Europe, and therefore was the Greek that the word borrowers knew.
Anglicisation The general trend with
loanwords is toward what is called
Anglicisation or
naturalisation, that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns have settled on, or acquired a modern form from the original (usually Latin). Other nouns have become Anglicised, taking on the normal "s" ending. In some cases, both forms are still competing. The choice of a form can often depend on context: for a scholar, the plural of
appendix is
appendices (following the original language); for some physicians, the plural of
appendix is
appendixes. Likewise, a
radio or
radar engineer works with
antennas, but an
entomologist deals with
antennae. The choice of form can also depend on the level of discourse: traditional Latin plurals are found more often in academic and scientific contexts, whereas in daily speech the Anglicised forms are more common. In the following table, the Latin plurals are listed, together with the Anglicised forms when these are more common. Different paradigms of Latin pronunciation can lead to confusion as to the number or gender of the noun in question. As traditionally used in English, including scientific, medical, and legal contexts, Latin nouns retain the classical inflection with regard to spelling; however, those inflections use an
Anglicised pronunciation: the entomologist pronounces
antennae as . This may cause confusion for those familiar with the Classical Latin pronunciation . The words
alumni (masculine plural) and
alumnae (feminine plural) are notorious in this regard, as
alumni in Anglicised pronunciation sounds the same as
alumnae in
Classical Latin pronunciation, and
vice versa. Because many of these plurals do not end in
-s, some of them have been reinterpreted as singular forms: particularly the words
datum and
medium (as in a "medium of communication"), where the original plurals
data and
media are now, in many contexts, used by some as singular mass nouns: "The media is biased"; "This data shows us that ..." (although a number of scientists, especially of British origin, still say "These data show us that ..."). See
below for more information. Similarly, words such as
criteria and
phenomena are used as singular by some speakers, although this is still considered incorrect in standard usage (see
below). Final
-a becomes
-ae (also
-æ), or just adds
-s: Scientific abbreviations for words of Latin origin ending in
-a, such as
SN for
supernova, can form a plural by adding
-e, as
SNe for
supernovae. Final
-ex or
-ix becomes
-ices (pronounced ), or just adds
-es: Final
-is becomes
-es (pronounced ) or
-ises/-ides: Except for words derived from Greek , which become (pronounced or ): (Some of these are Greek rather than Latin words, but the method of plural formation in English is the same.) Some people treat
process as if it belonged to this class, pronouncing
processes instead of standard . Since the word comes from Latin , whose plural in the
fourth declension is with a long
u, this pronunciation is by
analogy, not etymology.
Axes , the plural of
axis, is pronounced differently from
axes , the plural of
ax(e). Final
-ies remains unchanged:
Specie for a singular of
species is considered nonstandard. It is standard meaning the form of money, where it derives from the Latin singular ablative in the phrase
in specie. Final
-um becomes
-a, or just adds
-s: Final
-us becomes
-i (
second declension, ) or
-era or
-ora (
third declension), or just adds
-es (especially for
fourth declension words, where the Latin plural was similar to the singular): Final
-us remains unchanged in the plural (fourth declension—the plural has a long ū to differentiate it from the singular short u): Colloquial usages based in a humorous fashion on the second declension include
Elvii (better Latin would be
Elvēs or Elvidēs) to refer to multiple
Elvis impersonators, and
Loti, used by
petrolheads to refer to
Lotus automobiles in the plural. Some Greek plurals are preserved in English (
cf. Plurals of words of Greek origin): Final
-on becomes
-a: Final
-as in one case changes to
-antes: Final
-ma in nouns of Greek origin can become
-mata, although
-s is usually also acceptable, and in many cases more common. Such
-ata plurals also occur in Latin words borrowed from Greek, e.g.
poemata. The
a is short in both languages.
Irregular plurals from other languages Some nouns of
French origin add an
-x, which may be silent or pronounced : See also below. Italian nouns, notably technical terms in music and art, often retain the Italian plurals: Foreign terms may take native plural forms, especially when the user is addressing an audience familiar with the language. In such cases, the conventionally formed English plural may sound awkward or be confusing. Nouns of
Slavic origin add
-a or
-i according to native rules, or just
-s: Nouns of
Hebrew origin add
-im or
-ot (generally m/f) according to native rules, or just
-s:
-ot is pronounced
os (with unvoiced
s) in the
Ashkenazi dialect. Many nouns of
Japanese origin have no plural form and do not change: Other nouns such as
kimonos,
ninjas,
futons, and
tsunamis are more often seen with a regular English plural. In
New Zealand English, nouns of
Māori origin can either take an
-s or have no separate plural form. Words more connected to Māori culture and used in that context tend to retain the same form, while names of flora and fauna may or may not take an
-s, depending on context. Many regard omission as more correct:
Notes: Some words borrowed from
Inuktitut and related languages spoken by the
Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, retain the original plurals. The word
Inuit itself is the plural form. Canadian English also borrows Inuktitut singular
Inuk, which is uncommon in English outside Canada. Nouns from languages other than the above generally form plurals as if they were native English words:
Plurals of compound nouns The majority of English
compound nouns have one basic term, or
head, with which they end. These are nouns and are pluralized in typical fashion: Some compounds have one head with which they begin. These heads are also nouns and the head usually pluralizes, leaving the second, usually a
post-positive adjective, term unchanged: It is common in informal speech to pluralize the last word instead, like most English nouns, but in edited prose aimed at educated people, the forms given above are usually preferred. If a compound can be thought to have two heads, both of them tend to be pluralized when the first head has an irregular plural form: Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head: In military and naval usage, the terms
general,
colonel, and
commander, as part of an officer's title, are etymologically adjectives, but they have been adopted as nouns and are thus heads, so compound titles employing them are pluralized at the end: For compounds of three or more words that have a head (or a term functioning as a head) with an irregular plural form, only that term is pluralized: For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front—especially in cases where the compound is
ad hoc or the head is metaphorical—it is generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last (if open when singular, such compounds tend to take hyphens when plural in the latter case): With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g.
heads of state): In some extended compounds constructed around
o, only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural): See also the
Headless nouns section below.
French compounds Many English compounds have been
borrowed directly from
French, and these generally follow a somewhat different set of rules. In French loaned compounds with a noun as head and a qualifying adjective, it is correct to pluralize both words, in common with French practice. Usually in French, the noun precedes the adjective: In some expressions, the adjective precedes the noun, in which case it is still correct to pluralize both words, in common with French practice, although in the English form sometimes only the noun is pluralized: However, if the adjectives
beau "beautiful/handsome",
nouveau "new", or
vieux "old" precede a singular noun beginning with a vowel or a mute
h (such as
homme), they are changed to
bel (as in the example below),
nouvel, or
vieil (to facilitate pronunciation in French). In these cases, both the noun and the adjective are pluralized in the English form as in French: In other French compound expressions, only the head noun is pluralized:
but:
Plurals of letters and abbreviations The plural of individual letters is usually written with ''-'s
: there are two a's in this sentence
; mind your p's and q's
; dot the i's and cross the t's''. Some people extend this use of the
apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of ''but's
"). However, others prefer to avoid this method (which can lead to confusion with the possessive -'s
), and write 1990s
, buts
; this is the style recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style''. Likewise,
acronyms and initialisms are normally pluralized simply by adding (lowercase)
-s, as in
MPs, although the apostrophe is sometimes seen. Use of the apostrophe is more common in those cases where the letters are followed by periods (''B.A.'s
), or where the last letter is S (as in PS's
and CAS's
, although PSs
and CASs
are also acceptable; the ending -es'' is also sometimes seen). English (like Latin and certain other European languages) can form a plural of certain one-letter abbreviations by doubling the letter: p. ("page"), pp. ("pages"). Other examples include ll. ("lines"), ff. ("following lines/pages"), hh. ("hands", as a measure), PP. ("Popes"), SS. ("Saints"), ss. (or §§) ("sections"), vv. ("volumes"). Some multi-letter abbreviations can be treated the same way, by doubling the final letter: MS ("manuscript"), MSS ("manuscripts"); op. ("opus"), opp. ("opera" as plural of opus). However, often the abbreviation used for the singular is used also as the abbreviation for the plural; this is normal for most units of measurement and currency. The
SI unit symbols are officially not considered abbreviations and not pluralized, as in 10 m ("10 metres").
Headless nouns In
The Language Instinct, linguist
Steven Pinker discusses what he calls "headless words", typically
bahuvrihi compounds, such as
lowlife and
flatfoot, in which
life and
foot are not
heads semantically; that is, a lowlife is not a type of life, and a flatfoot is not a type of foot. When the common form of such a word is singular, it is treated as if it has a regular plural, even if the final constituent of the word is usually pluralized in an irregular fashion. Thus the plural of
lowlife is
lowlifes, not "lowlives", according to Pinker. Other proposed examples include: An exception is
Blackfoot, of which the plural can be
Blackfeet, though that form of the name is officially rejected by the Blackfoot
First Nations of Canada. Another analogous case is that of sport team names such as the
Miami Marlins and
Toronto Maple Leafs. For these, see below.
Defective nouns Plurals without singulars Some nouns have no singular form. Such a noun is called a . Examples include
cattle,
thanks,
clothes (originally a plural of
cloth). A particular set of nouns, describing things having two parts, comprises the major group of in modern English: • glasses (a pair of
spectacles),
pants,
panties,
pantyhose,
pliers,
scissors,
shorts,
suspenders,
tongs (metalworking & cooking),
trousers, etc. These words are interchangeable with
a pair of scissors,
a pair of trousers, and so forth. In the American fashion industry it is common to refer to a single pair of pants as a
pant—though this is a
back-formation, the English word (deriving from the French ) was originally singular. In the same field, one half of a pair of scissors separated from the other half is, rather illogically, referred to as a
half-scissor.
Tweezers used to be part of this group, but
tweezer has come into common usage since the second half of the 20th century. Nouns describing things having two parts are expressed in the singular when used as adjectives. Other '''' remain unchanged as adjectives. There are also some plural nouns whose singular forms exist, though they are much more rarely encountered than the plurals:
Notes: Singulars without plurals Mass nouns (or uncountable nouns) do not represent distinct objects, so the singular and plural semantics do not apply in the same way. Some examples: • Abstract nouns: deceit, information, cunning, and nouns derived from adjectives, such as honesty, wisdom, intelligence, poverty, stupidity, curiosity, and words ending with "
-ness", such as goodness, freshness, laziness, and nouns which are homonyms of adjectives with a similar meaning, such as good, bad (can also use goodness and badness), hot, and cold. • In the arts and sciences: chemistry, geometry, surgery, the blues, jazz, rock and roll, impressionism, surrealism. This includes those that look plural but function as grammatically singular in English, e.g., "Mathematics
is fun" and "thermodynamics
is the science of heat":
mathematics (and in British English the shortened form 'maths'), physics, mechanics, dynamics, statics,
thermodynamics,
aerodynamics,
electronics, hydrodynamics,
robotics, acoustics, optics, computer graphics,
ethics,
linguistics, etc. • Chemical elements and other physical entities: aluminum (U.S.) / aluminium (U.K.), copper, gold, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, equipment, furniture, traffic, air and water
Notes: Some mass nouns can be pluralized, but the meaning in this case may change somewhat. For example, when someone has two
grains of sand, they do not have
two sands, but
sand. However, there could be the many "sands of Africa": either many distinct stretches of sand, or distinct types of sand of interest to
geologists or builders, or simply the allusive
The Sands of Mars. It is rare to pluralize
furniture in this way (though it was formerly more common) and
information is never pluralized. There are several isotopes of oxygen, which might be referred to as different oxygens. In casual speech,
oxygen might be used as shorthand for "an oxygen atom", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so one can refer to "multiple oxygens in the same molecule". One would interpret "Bob's
wisdoms" as "various pieces of Bob's wisdom" (that is, "don't run with scissors", "defer to those with greater knowledge"),
deceits as a series of instances of deceitful behaviour (lied on income tax, dated my wife), and the different
idlenesses of the worker as plural distinct manifestations of the mass concept of idleness (or as different types of idleness, "bone lazy" versus "no work to do"). The pair
specie and
species both come from a Latin word meaning "kind", but they do not form a singular-plural pair. In Latin,
specie is the
ablative singular form, while
species is the
nominative form, which happens to be the same in both singular and plural. In English,
species behaves similarly—as a noun with identical singular and plural—while
specie is treated as a mass noun, referring to money in the form of coins (the idea is of "[payment] in kind").
Singulars as plural and plurals as singular Plural words becoming singular Plural in form but singular in construction Certain words which were originally plural in form have come to be used almost exclusively as singulars (usually uncountable); for example
billiards,
measles,
news,
mathematics,
physics, etc. Some of these words, such as
news, are strongly and consistently felt as singular by fluent speakers. These words are usually marked in dictionaries with the phrase "plural in form but singular in construction" (or similar wording). Others, such as
aesthetics, are less strongly or consistently felt as singular; for the latter type, the dictionary phrase "plural in form but singular or plural in construction" recognizes variable
usage.
Plural form became a singular form Some words of foreign origin are much better known in their (foreign-
morphology) plural form, and are often not even recognized by English speakers as having plural form;
descriptively, in English morphology many of these simply are not in plural form, because English has naturalized the foreign plural as the English singular. Usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic,
hypercorrective, or incorrect. In the examples below, the original plural is now commonly used as a singular, and in some cases a regular English plural (effectively a
double plural) has been formed from it.
Magazine was derived from Arabic via French. It was originally plural, but in French and English it is always regarded as singular. Other words whose plurals are sometimes used as singulars include:
Notes: Back-formation Some words have unusually formed singulars and plurals, but develop "normal" singular-plural pairs by
back-formation. For example,
pease (modern
peas) was in origin a singular with plural
peasen. However,
pease came to be analysed as plural by analogy, from which a new singular
pea was formed; the spelling of
pease was also altered accordingly, surviving only in the name of the dish
pease porridge or
pease pudding. Similarly,
termites was the three-syllable plural of
termes; this singular was lost, however, and the plural form reduced to two syllables.
Syringe is a back-formation from
syringes, itself the plural of
syrinx, a musical instrument.
Cherry is from
Norman French cherise.
Phases was once the plural of
phasis, but the singular is now
phase. The nonstandard, offensive, and now obsolete
Chinee and
Portugee singulars are back-formations from the standard
Chinese and
Portuguese.
Kudos is a singular Greek word meaning praise, but is often taken to be a plural. At present, however,
kudo is considered an error, though the usage is becoming more common as
kudos becomes better known. The name of the Greek sandwich style
gyros is increasingly undergoing a similar transformation. The term, from Latin, for the main upper arm flexor in the singular is the
biceps muscle (from
biceps brachii); however, many English speakers take it to be a plural and refer to the muscle of only one arm, by back-formation, as
a bicep. The correct—although very seldom used—Latin plural is
bicipites. The word
sastrugi (hard ridges on deep snow) is of Russian origin and its singular is
sastruga; but the imagined Latin-type singular
sastrugus has sometimes been used.
Geographical plurals used as singular Geographical names may be treated as singular even if they are plural in form, if they are regarded as representing a single entity such as a country:
The United States is a country in North America (similarly with
the Netherlands,
the Philippines,
Trinidad and Tobago,
the United Nations, etc.). However, if the sense is a group of geographical objects, such as islands or mountains, a plural-form name will be treated as plural:
The Hebrides are a group of islands off the coast of Scotland. Singulars with collective meaning treated as plural Words such as
army,
company,
crowd,
family,
fleet,
government,
majority,
mess,
number,
pack,
party and
team may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set composing it. If the latter meaning is intended, the word (though singular in form) may be treated as if it were a plural, in that it may take a plural verb and be replaced with a plural pronoun: (in British English)
the government are considering their position (alternatively
the government is considering its position). See
synesis. Thus, as
H. W. Fowler describes, in
British English they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "
The Cabinet is
divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and
The Cabinet are
agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree."
Plurals of numbers The following rules apply to the plurals of numerical terms such as
dozen,
score,
hundred,
thousand,
million, and similar: • When modified by a number, the plural is not inflected, that is, has no
-s added. Hence
one hundred,
two million,
four score, etc. (The resulting quantitative expressions are treated as numbers, in that they can modify nouns directly:
three dozen eggs, although
of is used before pronouns or definite noun phrases:
three dozen of them/of those eggs.) • When not modified by a number, the plural takes
-s as usual, and the resulting expression is not a number (it requires
of if modifying a noun):
I have hundreds,
dozens of complaints,
the thousands of people affected. Although the word
hundred is a number if and only if it is both modified by a number and modifies a number itself.
three hundred thousand dollars • When the modifier is a vaguer expression of number, either pattern may be followed:
several hundred (people) or
several hundreds (of people). • When the word has a specific meaning rather than being a simple expression of quantity, it is pluralized as an ordinary noun:
Last season he scored eight hundreds [=scores of at least 100
runs in cricket]. The same applies to other numbers:
My phone number consists of three fives and four sixes. • Note the expressions
by the dozen etc. (singular);
in threes [=in groups of three] etc. (plural);
eight sevens are fifty-six etc.
Determiners The demonstrative determiners
this and
that have plural forms
these and
those, respectively. The
cardinal numeral determiners (e.g.,
twenty people) do not have plural forms. Apparent examples, such as
they numbered in the twenties are nouns. ==Usage and number agreement==