Anyone know the answer to the question on Car Talk today?
Most nouns are made plural by adding an “-s” or an"es" to the same word. Still others change more letters in plural form but retain many of the same letters as the singular (example: thief/thieves). However there is one noun whose plural contains none of the letters that are in the singular form. We also know that this plural version is rather uncommon but found in nearly all dictionaries, while the single word is quite common. Furthermore, the plural word can be encountered in the book Lord of the Rings.
The uncommon plural would seem to rule out “I/we” or other similar pronouns.
Boromir’s horn came from the Kine of Araw, some sort of large thunderous critters hunted by his ancestor Vorondil (and yes, thanks, I do feel like a total geek now )
That’s probably right, but I think it’s pretty lame. Kine isn’t exactly a plural for the word cow. Of course a lot of the puzzler answers are pretty lame.
I wish they’d stick to automotive related puzzlers.
while I fully agree that it’s lame, it fits all the conditions. it’s in my Webster’s New World Dictionary and here as an archaic world for cows/cattle, it doesn’t share any letters with the word cow, it sure as hell is uncommon while cow is very common, and it appears in LOTR.
maybe nice people at Car Talk got confused today and thought their show was actually “Cow Talk”?
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