About ten years ago, I was driving to work and heard a trivia question on the radio that went something like this:
What English word has the most plural forms?
Unfortunately, I got to work before they aired the answer, so I never found out what it was. Since then, I occasionally wonder about it, and I’d really like to know just what word they were referring to.
A little additional information/caveats/suppositions:
I don’t recall exactly how the original question was worded.
I assume, but I don’t know for sure, that this isn’t a trick question.
I seem to recall (but don’t know for sure) that the number referred to is four, i.e., the question might have been, “what is the only English word with four different plural forms?”
Perhaps words that are both nouns and verbs have different plural forms; i.e., the word “drop” is plural if it is a verb (“they drop”), and “drops” is plural if it’s a noun.
My best guess to an answer is “cow”, which has two plural noun forms, “cows” and “kine”, one plural verb form, “cow”, and a sorta plural form, “cattle”. I think this is cheating, though. There must be something better.
So, is there a definite answer to this? Suggestions on other places to search for an answer would be appreciated, also.
How about “octopus?” It’s proper plural is “octopuses.” It’s original Greek plural is “octopodes,” although, they’s spell it with a “k.” And, since it looks like a Latin word, the plural “octopi” has been coined in keeping with Latin plural conventions.
And the original Greek word is actually spelled (transliterated) “oktopous.” Somewhere along the line, the “k” became a “c,” and the third “o” dropped.
Yeah, I was thinking that the “correct” answer to this might be some kind of Greek or Latin word that has both a male and female form and a Greek/Latin and Anglicized plural. I was thinking maybe “alumna” (female form of alumnus), which has a proper plural “alumnae” as well as, arguably “alumni” (y’know, an alumna and an alumnus are two alumni). If “alumnas” and “alumnuses” were proper words, that might have been it.
“Octopus” or “schema” might be right, although my dictionary lists only two plural forms of each. It’s a little hard to tell, since I’m not sure if the original trivia question that I heard was intended to include root-language or really obscure plural forms.
It’s funny, zut, I once saw alumnus pluralized as “alumni/ae”, which I pronounced “alumnee aye” in accordance with my wag. So if you add in the slash-marked version, it looks like almnus has a really large number of plural forms. I would just say “alums” but I’m kind of a barbarian anyway.
Is Hanukkah an English word? This site: http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words1.html
offers 17 spellings although some of them look pretty dubious. But all 17 spelling can be pluralized as in: To our Jewish friends, may all your Hanukkahs be joyous. So there is a word with 17 plurals. Top that.
Perderabo: I guess I was interpreting the question as referring to a word with a single spelling having multiple plurals (otherwise, the question would be, “which English word has the most alternate spellings?”) I confess, though, that that there may have been a “trick” to the question.
Still and all, some words have multiple plural forms (like “cow”), and there must be at least one that has “the most,” by whatever definition you choose.