I can only think of one…
clothes…
are there more?
pants
Start going into clothing, pants, jeans…how about trousers? Can you have A trouser? Clothes are weird, cuz then you’ve got underwear which has no plural.
Jeans and trousers are things…clothes is generic.
How about groceries? Sure, you can go to a grocery store, but grocery doesn’t really have a singular meaning here. They don’t have just one grocery in the shop.
Teach…
I think groceries is a misuse of the word. Sort of a slang term.
May I just say that “underwear which has no plural” would make a great band name?
From A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia:
ALMS is a word with no singular form. Other such words are: AGENDA, IDES, BRACES, CATTLE, CLOTHES, MARGINALIA, PANTS, PLIERS, SCISSORS, SHORTS, and TROUSERS (although there is “trouser leg”)
Agenda may have been a plural in Latin, but it’s most definitely a singular in English (I’ll have to write Jeff about that). There’s a number of words that are plural in the original language, but are either singular or a collective or mass noun (and thus used with a singular verb) in English:
bacteria
candelabra
confetti
criteria
data
graffiti
spaghetti (and other forms of pasta)
stamina
trivia
This is not a complete list. And yes, I know that some of those have singulars in English, but that doesn’t change the way these are used.
Tweezers
Yes, there are people that use singular verb forms with “data” and “criteria”. That doesn’t make it right.
I’m certain that groceries, meaning the goods sold by a grocer, is not a slang expression. I admit, however, that it’s not a perfect example of a word that is only used in the plural.
eaves
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by dtilque *
**
bacterium
criterion
datum
“pea” was not originally a word. “pease” was one of these plural words without a singular, and “pea” was “backformed” from the plural “pease”. Then the plural of “pea” ecame “peas” without the final “e”, and left us with “pease porridge” as a conundrum.
In the same vein, there are words with rarely used singulars, such as “dice”. Ambrose Bierce had a wonderful bit about this in his “Devil’s Dictionary”. I quote, to the best of my recollection:
“…there is a singular form, “die”, which is rarely used, because there is an admonitory proverb, “never say ‘die’”.”
He then provides his own poem (with a hack name as nominal author):
“A cube of cheese no bigger than a die
May bait a trap to catch a nibbling mie.”
doldrums
But I imagine the singular of “confetti” is “confettus”. The thought of it makes me laugh. I’m picturing the Harlem Globetrotters pouring (?) a bucket of a singular confettus on some poor unsuspecting schmoe.
Now I’m wondering about the difference between “plural words that have no singular form”, and words are the same in both singular and plural/collective forms - “deer” comes readily to mind? Or a word like “meat”, which to me has a collective…essence? One may have a piece of meat, but never “a meat”.
And I hesitate to pick a nit (though I will), but “graffiti” has a singular in “graffito”, although as dictionary.compoints out,
and “candelabra” has “candelabrum” as the singular form.
Shaky Jake
debris
Another of those “singular and plural” words is “Mongoose”. Yes, the plural of “mongoose” really is “mongoose”. Look it up.
“Give me to mongooses…uhhh… Give me two Mongeese…uhh…Give me a mongoose. And while you’re at it, give me another one.”
crayons has no singular. i don’t think you can have one crayon. if you find yourself with only one crayon you need to buy a new box.