101 Words That are Both Plural and Singular

126 thoughts on “101 Words That are Both Plural and Singular”

1. Grass

2. Today

3. Pingback: Die Wichtigkeit von Englischer Grammatik: Wann es darauf ankommt (Und drei nützliche Regeln) | FluentU English German

4. Yes, you’re right.

5. What about “means”?

6. Just curious. I thought fox was both singular and plural. Is that something old and has been revised? I have always used it as both.

7. Hair

8. A cube you roll with the numbers 1 to 6 on it is called a die. If you have 2 or more of them they are called dice. But in the verb sense things are sort of backwards a person dies, but 2 or people die.

9. I think you are correct Ken.

10. Fishy answers? But I don’t think cattle is used in the singular sense. You don’t go over to a cattle. You go over to a cow or bull or steer. But interestingly you can have a herd of cattle or herd of cows, so in that sense cattle would be singular, but not used in general language to my knowledge.

11. Ken, you can have a piece of gravel it is a single stone. But many stones can be called gravel.

12. You can have 2 or 3 dozen, rarely have I heard of 2 or 3 dozens. Hundred is similar, one hundred, 2 hundred, 3 hundred etc.. But in both cases you can have expressions like ‘dozens of people turn up to the rally’ or ‘hundreds of cattle went to the yards’.

13. Equipment

14. Information and feedback

15. No, you say “the gravel is in the yard”; you don’t say “the gravel are in the yard”. Gravel is singular. A builders’ merchant might sell different gravels, and then it means “types of gravel”.

16. I’d personally never talk about “monies”, but I think lawyers do.

17. No, there are two different words here:
    1. A person: plural persons (legal and technical use), or people (everyday use) = a human being.
    2. A people: plural peoples = a race or nation.

18. It depends what you want them to be.

    Singular: There is a black sheep in that field. I saw a red deer yesterday. You’ve caught a fish.
    Plural: Those sheep seem to be scared. Scotland is a good place to see some deer. Fish were gathering below the bridge.

19. Sing: fox, Pl: foxes.
    But people who hunt wild animals seem to have a habit of putting them in the singular. They say “We’re hoping to shoot some lion… This is a good area for gazelle… Fox? I don’t know. Yet all these have perfectly good plurals.

20. If this were my list, i would: remove all but the 31 words which are below and add ‘watercraft’.
    I would keep these:
    1: Aircraft
    2: Bison
    3: Caribou
    4: Chalk
    5: Cod
    6: Deer
    7: Eggfruit
    8: Elk
    9: Fish (numbers of)
    10: Fruit
    11: Goldfish
    12: Grapefruit
    13: Halibut
    14: Hovercraft
    15: Jackfruit
    16: Moose
    17: Monkfish
    18: Offspring
    19: Passionfruit
    20: Pike
    21: Reindeer
    22: Salmon
    23: Sheep
    24: Shellfish
    25: Shrimp
    26: Spacecraft
    27: Squid
    28: Starfruit
    29: Swine
    30: Trout
    31: You
    BUT I am not trying to maximize my list. Some of these words are singular and plural, like ‘dice’ which *also* has a singular ‘die’. But I have seen ‘dice’ as the singular too. However, ‘die’ has been gaining popularity as the singular word for ‘dice’. Many of these are just stupid if you ask me, like ‘wood’, ‘aluminum’, and ‘oxygen’, etc. These are materials. They don’t have singular nor plural forms.
    Things like ‘crossroads’ is certainly singular or plural, based on context. But this doesn’t count ‘in my book’. But if you want to maximize your list, then ‘crossroads’ is your friend. 😛
    But i found what i came for. 🙂 Thanks!!