Nouns Lacking Plural or Singular Form
Certain nouns do not form plurals. A large class of such nouns in many languages is that of uncountable nouns, representing mass or abstract concepts such as air, information, physics. However many nouns of this type also have countable meanings or other contexts in which a plural can be used; for example water can take a plural when it means water from a particular source (different waters make for different beers) and in expressions like by the waters of Babylon.
There are also nouns found exclusively or almost exclusively in the plural, such as the English scissors. There are referred to with the term plurale tantum.
Read more about this topic: Plural
Famous quotes containing the words nouns, lacking, singular and/or form:
“Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Feeling needy—mistaking vulnerability for weakness—doesn’t fit in with our image of what being a mother is all about. If we are needy, how can we care well for a much needier baby? There is a widespread feeling that we have to do it all alone, and if we don’t know something, or can’t manage it, or, heaven forbid, don’t want to, there is something lacking in our makeup.”
—Sally Placksin (20th century)
“It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a lustre obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment—but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)