Plain English. Marian Wharton
All other nouns in f or fe are regular; adding only s, to form the plural.
75. About forty nouns ending in o after a consonant form the plural in es. The most common ones are:
buffalo
cargo
potato
tomato
negro
veto
cargo
echo
calico
embargo
hero
mulatto
mosquito
motto
tornado
volcano
torpedo
flamingo
Most nouns ending in o form the plural regularly, adding only s, as pianos, banjos, cameos, etc.
76. A few words form their plurals by a change in the word and without adding s or es.
The most common of these words are:
| man | men |
| goose | geese |
| ox | oxen |
| woman | women |
| foot | feet |
| mouse | mice |
| brother | brethren |
| tooth | teeth |
| child | children |
| louse | lice |
77. Proper nouns, when made plural, generally follow the same rule as common nouns. Thus we write:
All the Smiths, the Joneses, both the Miss Johnsons, one of the Dr. Davidsons, and the Mrs. Wilsons, were present.
But to prevent the confusion and misunderstanding which might arise in changing the form of a proper noun, we do not change its form in writing the plurals; for example:
There were eight Henrys, kings of England.
The two Marys reigned in the kingdom.
It would be confusing to say eight Henries, the two Maries.
The title is made plural when several are referred to, thus:
| Mr. Hayes | The Messrs. Hayes |
| Miss Smith | The Misses Smith |
78. The title is made plural when used with several names, thus:
Messrs. Brown and White.
Generals Lee and Grant.
Drs. Long and Larson.
79. In the case of nouns formed of two or more words, when the compound word is so familiar that the parts are not thought of separately the s is added to the whole compound word, as four-in-hands; forget-me-nots; court-yards; spoonfuls; green-houses; etc. But when one of the parts is more important than the others, the s is added to the more important part, thus:
mothers-in-law
commanders-in-chief
hangers-on
men-of-war
by-standers
attorneys-at-law
passers-by
step-sons
80. We have many words in our language taken from other languages. They do not form the plural in these languages as we do, and some of these words retain their foreign plurals. Some of the most commonly used of these nouns are the following:
| Singular | Plural |
|---|---|
| alumnus | alumni |
| analysis | analyses |
| axis | axes |
| datum | data |
| erratum | errata |
| ellipsis | ellipses |
| appendix | appendices |
| bacterium | bacteria |
| basis | bases |
| crisis | crises |
| parenthesis | parentheses |
| radius | radii |
| terminus | termini |
| hypothesis | hypotheses |
| larva | larvae |
| madame | mesdames |
| memorandum | memoranda |
| phenomenon | phenomena |
| stratum | strata |
| thesis | theses |