plural nouns ending with ...

Factual Questions
1

I have been trying to come up with a list of plural nouns ending with various letters of the alphabet. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
A - data, bacteria
B - corns-on-the-cob
C -
D - cod, head (as in cattle)
E - mice
F - chiefs of staff, commanders in chief
G - offspring
H - teeth
I - alumni
J -
K -
L - governors-general, courts-martial, cupsful
M - cherubim
N - men, women
O - derrings-do, buffalo
P - sheep, aides-de-camp
Q - Mi’kmaq
R - deer
s - tables
T - feet
U - caribou
V - chickens Kiev
W - sons-in-law
X - châteaux, gâteaux, beaux, jacks-in-the-box, oryx
y - passersby
Z - pince-nez

Can this list be improved? I’m looking for examples for C, J and K, and better examples for B, F, V, W, Z. And also additional examples for G, H, M, N, R, T, U, W, Y

English words are preferred, but loanwords from foreign languages are acceptable, as long as they are listed in an ordinary English dictionary.

Single words are preferable, but hyphenated words are acceptable. Phrases such as “chiefs of staff” are the least satisfactory items on the list.

Common nouns are preferable, but proper nouns will be acceptable if there is no other word available.
I’m not sure whether ‘corns-on-the-cob’ and ‘chickens Kiev’ are even legitimate plurals.

I’ve heard there are no English words ending with the letter j. Any ideas for this? Maybe

there’s a proper noun ending with the letter. Any loanwords from Esperanto in the English dictionary?

2

technically, the plural parts all in with s: corns, chiefs, commanders, governors, etc. so if it were up to me, these wouldn’t count.

3

Some years back this remark would have resulted in a vitriolic letter to the (London) Times from a retired colonel who had served in India during the British Raj.

No clue, though, what if any the plural might be.

4

For B use “squab”, then, although “squabs” is also used.

5

I’m pretty sure the plural of corn on the cob is corn on the cob. Same with chicken Kiev.

If you call Mom up and ask her what’s for dinner, she won’t say “Fishes.” In the same vein, she is unlikely to say “Meat loaf and *corns on the cob” or “*Chickens Kiev.”

6

But a mass noun is not the same thing as a plural.

7

I was thinking about that possibility but I couldn’t find a dictionary that gave the plural of raj. But I did find that the plural of haj is hajes, so raj probably follows the same rule.

8

Notaries public?

9

Might “y’all” be better for L?

10

Some years ago, well, quite a few years ago, sometime in the late 80s-early 90s, Chris Long posted a similar query to rec.puzzles. He had a complete list already, but wanted improvements, since he was planning on submitting the list in an article to Word Ways.

The ideal entry for his list was a word that merely adds a letter to it to make it plural. Many of his entries were less than ideal. I happened to supply a couple improvements so he made me coauthor of the article. He’s since incorporated the list into the rec.puzzles FAQ archive: link

Since that was published I’ve seen one addititional improvement, but Chris has not seen fit to add it. This word is in Webster’s Third, but this particular plural is not, possibly due to an oversight as it was in Webster’s Second as well as the OED. I’ve also seen the plural used in an English language book published just a few years before Web3 was published. However Chris seems to be something of a Web3 snob, so he didn’t add this to the archive:

D 0 FILI FILID
As for English words ending in J, I wrote a Word Ways article on that, too. By combing through various unabridged dictionaries, I found about 40 such words. Almost all of them are obscure words borrowed from Arabic or Hindi or some such language. I could have made the list somewhat longer by including some very old English spellings where a long I sound was spelled IJ and happened to be at the end of a word. I included one of these and there were several others I could have added.

Chris also put this list in the rec.puzzles archive: link I’m not going to post the list here. Go to that page and search it for j.ending if you’re really interested.

11

I think one talib, two taliban would be a better example for “n”, because in “men” the n was already the end of the singular word and has nothing to do with its becoming plural.

12

There are kernels of corn on a cob – not corns. You wouldn’t say there are sugars in a sugar bowl. The group name is corn.

Head (as in cattle) is singular. A head of cattle is demanding of much care and attention before it is brought to market.

Jacks-in-the-box? I can’t imagine such a use. Isn’t Jack in the box the brand name? What does the word “Jack” refer to? Is it a piece of the contents or is it the name of the sailor on the box? Or is it possible the whole of the contents? I don’t believe that you can correctly interfere with a name in that way.

Good work on your list! Amazing job!

13

>not corns

Wrongo, bucko. In talking about making corned beef, they describe packing the chunks of beef with the corns distributed around and between them, corns being big chunks of salt, so named for their resemblence to kernels. I picture kernels of american “corn” or “maize” to the rest of the world, but maybe the association was with “corn” in the sense of “grain” ( as it means in much of the rest of the world).

14

That’s odd. I was wondering about this so I called Mom. She said, “Fishes. We’re having seared tuna as an appetizer and salmon as the main course.” :wink:

15

This business of corns got more interesting, I think:

“Corning is a form of curing; it has nothing to do with corn. The name comes from Anglo-Saxon times before refrigeration. In those days, the meat was dry-cured in coarse “corns” of salt. Pellets of salt, some the size of kernels of corn, were rubbed into the beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it.”

The Anglo-Saxons were a remarkably forsightful group, calling them “corns” because they were the size of kernels of a grain not yet known in the Old World.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcornedbeef.html
The Master speaks. Well, his minions do, anyway…

16

But one ear of corn is a corn-on-the-cob. And two ears would be two corns-on-the-cob, possibly. Or maybe not. Well, I said I wasn’t sure.

It’s also plural. See definition 10.

Jack-in-the-box is a type of toy where you open a box and a puppet on a spring jumps out.
http://www.cottontailsonline.com/ProductImages/schyilling/jackinthebox.jpg

If you have two of them, you have two jacks-in-the-box. According to some dictionaries, anyway.

I’m British, BTW, and I don’t know what brand you’re referring to.

Thank you.

17

If you want a plural ending in N, what’s wrong with ox/oxen? (The -en is clearly the pluralizing element there, which isn’t the case, so much, with man/men.)

Esperanto, of course, is the language you want for plurals ending in J. All the Esperantistoj will tell you that. Dunno if there’s any loan words from Esperanto that have made it into English, though …

18

Child/children?

19

Culs-de-sac?

20

K = folk (although folks is used informally)