2707: Singular Words People Thought Were Plural May 19, 2024

Plenty of singular words ends in -s (e.g. ‘lens’), and even more end in -se (e.g. ‘house’), but in a few cases, this was assured to be plural. For instance, the word ‘pea’ used to be written out as ‘pease’ the plural of which was ‘peasen’, from Old English ‘pisa’, ultimately from Ancient Greek πίσον (píson). This changed in Modern English, joined by ‘cherry’, the root of which is “cherise”, though this had changed earlier, already “cherry” in Middle English. Of course, the opposite happens too wherein a plural word is assumed to be singular. This is typical especially of foreign words with plural forms other than -s, like ‘cannoli’ (singular ‘cannolo’) or ‘bacteria’ (singular ‘bacterium’), or ‘caper’ losing its perceived plural ‘-S’ from the French ‘câpres’.