A Plethora of Plurals

Question

Please find words that have the following properties:

A word that becomes its plural when the letter "s" at the end is dropped.
A word that becomes its plural when the first two letters are swapped.
Three words that become their plurals when letters are added to the beginning.
A word that has no letters in common with one of its plurals.
Three words that are plurals of two different words each.

Good luck!

Does a pluralized word need to be the plural of the original? — kayzeroshort, Feb 23 '17 at 23:18
@kayzeroshort Yes, sorry for not adding that. Edited my question to be more specific. — noneuclideanisms, Feb 23 '17 at 23:40

Bailey M · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-24T17:54:05.673

8

Let's see if these are what you're looking for!

1.

Per Rubio's suggestion, perhaps millionairess-> millionaires??

2.

Incredibly obscure: "Falaj" and "Aflaj".

3.

Yes -> Ayes. Then two very obscure ones: Loti -> Maloti and Xhosa -> Amaxhosa.

4.

Cow, which pluralizes archaically to "kine".

5.

Crosses (Cross/Crosse), Axes (Ax/Axis), Ellipses (Ellipsis, Ellipse)

edited Feb 24 '17 at 17:54

answered Feb 23 '17 at 23:16

Bailey M

16,973
2
69
119

Sorry, wasn't clear enough in my instructions. I have edited my question accordingly. Number 4 and number 5 are correct, though. – noneuclideanisms Feb 23 '17 at 23:38
Got it! I'll get back to work then. :) – Bailey M Feb 24 '17 at 02:22
All correct except for number 1. For 3 I was going for "sente" -> "lisente", but yours works too. – noneuclideanisms Feb 24 '17 at 03:01
rot47 >:==:@?2:C6DD @C 3:==:@?2:C6DD without the final "s" becomes plural without (strictly speaking) changing gender ... – Rubio Feb 24 '17 at 03:38
Since you're so close, I'll give you the checkmark now. – noneuclideanisms Feb 24 '17 at 17:19

BenM · Answer 2 · 2017-02-24T02:05:07.173

3

Q1:

A bit of a stretch, but timeliness describes how timely something is, i.e. its timeline. The plural of timeline is timelines.

Q4:

I, which has we as its plural.

Q5:

Axes is the plural of both axe and axis.
Bases is the plural of both base and basis.
Ellipses is the plural of both ellipse and...ellipsis.

edited Feb 24 '17 at 02:05

answered Feb 24 '17 at 01:27

BenM

1,273
8
11

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 23 '17 at 22:39

2

Answer to Q1:

Princess -> Princes changes both plurality and gender.

answered Feb 23 '17 at 22:39

Shane Smith

51
4

Klyzx · Answer 4 · 2017-02-24T00:28:01.223

2

Partial answer: Q2

acts --> cats

This was made before a clarification edit, so this answer isn't valid anymore.

edited Feb 24 '17 at 00:28

answered Feb 23 '17 at 23:09

Klyzx

534
5
12

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 10 '17 at 17:14

1

Caress doesn't become its plural, but becomes a plural, scares. I also think schools would work in another sense, where school is the collective noun for a group of fish.

2.

3.

I think a lot of collective nouns work here; also collateral adjectives could technically work here. For instance: bee, colony or apian.

edited Mar 10 '17 at 17:14

Glorfindel

28,033
9
96
142

answered Mar 10 '17 at 15:41

BAEsTHRM

11
1

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 23 '17 at 23:14

0

Q4:

man -> people; boy -> children; mom -> parents

Q5:

'Children' is the plural of both 'son' and 'daughter'.
'Parents' is the plural of both 'mother' and 'father'.
'siblings' is the plural of both 'brother' and 'sister'.

answered Feb 23 '17 at 23:14

kayzeroshort

13,043
50
62

4

Children is the plural of child. Multiple sons would be properly pluralized as sons. – greenturtle3141 Feb 23 '17 at 23:32

A Plethora of Plurals

6 Answers6