Mostly, making an English word into a plural is fairly easy, you add an S or ES to the end of it.
Window becomes windows
Arch becomes arches
Sometimes plurals are unusual though, for example, fish becomes fishes unless it’s still just fish. Ox becomes oxen. Calves, children, feet, and geese are also examplen of odd pluralen.
Interestingly, attorney general and mother-in-law becomes attorneys general and mothers-in-law, it makes sense because attorneys and mothers are the plurals here but we’re messing it up with other words.
Dish washer - I don’t wash one dish at a time, that would be a waste of water. This should be dishes washer.
Floors mop, steaks knife, hands soap, and nights light should all be plural too. I’m not using these on one floor, one steak, one of my hands, and only one night.
This seems to happen with food a lot. When I make meats loaf, I usually put ground beef and either pork or turkey in it. I only have one dog but if I had two I would feed them dogs food. And sometimes I have chickens nuggets and oranges juice, don’t tell me only one chicken and one orange was used to make these.
This reminds me of a character (I forget the name) conceived by writer Jon Bois who always refers to liquids in the plural. He doesn’t drink a glass of milk, he drinks a glass of some milks.
The reason the first words in these phrases aren’t pluralized is because they are not functioning as nouns, but as adjectives. And we don’t normally pluralize adjectives in English.
Bricklayer, anteater, babysitter, particle accelerator. These terms describe what is done, the qualitative relationship between the action and the object, not the quantity involved.
Yep. It’s attorneys general because the term uses a French construction of the noun followed by the adjective. It is an attorney who is a general attorney for the state (or whatever).
The other examples given are actually consistent in that, it is the noun that is made plural. Dishwashers. Hand soaps. Meatloafs.
The “irregulars” are actually remnants of prior forms of English that were more inflected and complicated, and had multiple classes of words with consistent but different plural endings.
There are a number of words ending in “f” that fall into one of these categories:
Some words in this group now have TWO forms of plural, both of which appear and are considered correct (mostly - because there are lots of opinions on this sort of thing)
Dwarf → dwarfs/dwarves
Elf → elfs/elves
Roof → roofs/rooves (that one is heavily leaning towards option 1 these days)
Hoof → hoofs/hooves
Staff → staffs/staves (and in some applications - such as “the staff who work in my office” the word “staff” on its own is plural. And words that remain the same both singular and plural - such as deer or fish - are another group.)
Then there is the “pluralize by ending with -en” group which you also mentioned examples of: ox/oxen, child/children, brother/brethren which yes, can also undergo some other changes
Bottom line - although now considered irregular, many of these words weren’t irregular in the past when English grammar was more complicated that it is now.
It should be noted that milk is what’s known as an uncountable noun, which means that no matter how much of it you have you don’t pluralize it because the word refers to the entire collection of it.
This doesn’t mean that the plural form is never used, but it’s pretty rare because it’s only used when you talk about distinct and non-mixed collections, such as different types of it. For example if you have cow’s milk and goat’s milk, that’s two different milks.
ETA:
This version of the word is an example of an uncountable noun.
And inversely, why is “pants” always plural in English? It’s a single article of clothing. It should be “a pant”, not “a pair of pants”. You don’t say “a pair of shirts”, unless you’re talking about two shirts.
That’s actually because the word “pants” is short for (pantalones in French, then pantaloons in English, IIRC) were garments that came in pairs, like socks. You wore one on each leg, and they attached to the codpiece and a piece for the waist, usually, the name of which is eluding me. Making a single garment out of the different pieces came later. The ability to make needles and thread had to reach a certain state of technology, I’m guessing.
My source is an acquaintance who had a degree in technical theater (that is, not in acting, but in the technical aspects of putting on plays), and worked in the costuming department of a large university. Usually, for period shows, she would use regular pants for actors that just looked period from the tunic down, but sometimes for some reason, they had to be very accurate, and the actor always bitched at her.
Actually, pantyhose is panty + hose. “Hose” is another word for “stocking,” and the plural was “hosen” back when the word was still common, which was about the 17th century. Hose is pretty rare now, except in the word “pantyhose,” or in a few regional dialects where the plural is now “a pair of hose.” Or when someone uses “hose” to mean “pantyhose.”
Anyway, at one time, the panty and the hose were always separate garments. Then someone got the ideal of making one out of them, and they were immediately popular. I’m pretty sure pantyhose are a 20th century innovation.
My favorite weird plural comes from an old puzzle on Car Talk: name an obscure plural noun that shares no letters in common with the related singular noun.
Another fun bit of weirdness: think of a plural noun. Add an -s to the end to get a singular noun. (There are multiple answers to this, I think, but only one that’s very common) (edit: I’ve looked at some lists and found at least two common answers; there may be more).
