I’ve overheard a lot of my classmates using the word ‘homework’ in a way that I would have expected the word ‘assignment’ or an alternative construction using ‘homework’ as an indefinite collective noun (I think)*. For example, I’ve heard, “There are five homeworks assigned but only four count toward your grade,” or, “I dropped Prof. X because she gives too many homeworks.” Although my department skews heavily South Asian/Indian, I haven’t noticed this as specific to that group or even to foreign students in general. (In fact, the first time I noticed it, it was from a local student.)
Is this a common usage? The first several google results for “a homework” all used ‘homework’ as an adjective (e.g., “A homework journal” or “A homework battle”).
I’m sorry. My formal English skills are rusty and this term may be wrong. Please feel free to correct me.
I have never used the word used in the way you describe, nor have I heard it used in that way. Native speaker of American English from the Midwest; graduated high school in '01 and got my B.A. (in English Lit with a minor in CompSci, FWIW) in '06.
I’ve seen similar situations with “equipment” and, like equipment, I think it’s incorrect. You get “a piece of homework” or “a piece of equipment.” Yes, even when the piece of equipment is a generator the side of the average living room.
I think this confusion is caused by nouns which, like “people,” can be countable (We the People; native peoples) or uncountable, and by some of those nouns being uncountable in English but countable in other languages. Those locals are picking it up from the foreigners, IME (I’ve been with a mixed-language group where one person didn’t get that Spanish countable Equipos turn into English collective Equipment, and in time it spread to the rest).
A couple of my professors and teaching assistants who came from India all used “homework” and “homeworks” this way. As in, “The homeworks are all graded,” or “Make sure you get to work on this homework because we have another homework on Thursday, so don’t wait.”
It’s not standard, but there’s no real reason why not. English often promotes adjectives to nouns: “a homework assignment” could become “a homework” in the same way that “a submarine vehicle” has become “a submarine,” or “a male person” has become “a male,” or “a car with an automatic transmission” became “an automatic,” but as far as I know it hasn’t happened yet in common usage.
As a college teacher, I can say that I’ll often use “homework” in place of “assignment”, to distinguish it from other sorts of assignments. I might say to a student, for instance, “You’re missing three homeworks”, instead of “You’re missing three assignments”, because “assignments” could also refer to in-class activities or whatever. I would not, however, say “Professor X assigns too many homeworks” unless I would prefer a few large assignments instead of the many small ones he gives out. If it’s the overall quantity of work that’s the problem, “Professor X assigns too much homework” would carry the intended meaning better.
I have nothing much to contribute except to say: to anyone who finds ‘homeworks’ jarring, and is a person who refers to a popular brand of plastic construction blocks as ‘Legos’ - now you know how I feel.
I first heard this usage when my kids were in elementary school in the 1990s. At first I wanted to complain, but so many of the teachers used it that I resigned myself to being an old fuddy-duddy.
