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)
“Chippenhook was the home of Judge Theophilus Harrington, known for his trenchant reply to an irate slave-owner in a runaway slave case. Judge Harrington declared that the owner’s claim to the slave was defective. The owner indignantly demanded to know what was lacking in his legally sound claim. The Judge exploded, ‘A bill of sale, sir, from God Almighty!’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders
we drowse as horses drowse afield,
in accord; though the fall cold
surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and often lonely.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages?”
—William Booth (1829–1912)