# Why do we say "oxen," but not "foxen?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 29, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827 "2005-07-29T23:36:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/1 "2005-07-29T23:36:09Z")
The plural of “ox” is “oxen.” Try saying “oxes” out loud, and it sounds weird because we’re not used to it. But we say “boxes” and “foxes” (are there any other words that end with “ox”?) Why exactly did the plural of “ox” come to be “oxen?” And why the plural of “fox” is not “foxen?” ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/2 "2005-07-29T23:52:42Z")
Because the english language is weird. Oh and what would the plural of Angelina Jolie’s son named Maddox? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/3 "2005-07-30T00:19:42Z")
Around the time of Chaucer, before the dialect of London was established as “standard” English, there were several forms vying for dominance. I believe in the Northern form -en was the standard plural. The Southern form (the dialect of Chaucer and London) formed the plural in -es. Eventually the -en form lost the battle and today it only survives in a very few words (oxen, brethren and children being the most common, though children had to fight it out with yet another dialect’s plural, childer). Now whether foxes used to be foxen back in the day and got assimilated or whether it came direct from the -es group, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/4 "2005-07-30T00:48:06Z")
Well, we do have vixen. And, for those users of DEC machines, I’ve seen the plural Vaxen. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/5 "2005-07-30T00:58:21Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Well, we do have vixen. And, for those users of DEC machines, I’ve seen the plural Vaxen. Interestingly enough, though, only the plural form survives. Not the origin of [vixen](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vixen). > [@](#): > > Word History: Why does the word fox begin with f but its female counterpart, vixen, begin with v? The answer lies in English dialects. In the speech of Devon, Somerset, and Cornwall, counties of southern England, words that begin with the voiceless fricative sounds (f) and (s) are pronounced instead with voicing, as (v) and (z). (The local rendering of the county name Somerset, in fact, is “Zomerzet.”) The voicing is due to a Middle English sound change and may have roots even earlier. At least three examples of this dialectal pronunciation have entered standard English: vat, vane, and vixen. The first of these is a variant of an earlier word fat; the pronunciation with (f) was still used in the 19th century before being displaced by the southern pronunciation (vt). Vane, which used to mean “flag,” has a cognate in the German word for “flag,” Fahne, showing the original f. Vixen, finally, represents the southern pronunciation of a word that goes back to Old English fyxe, the feminine of fox. It was formed by a change in the root vowel of fox and the addition of a suffix -e or -en. Besides being one of the rare southern English dialect forms to have come into standard English, vixen is also the only survival of this type of feminine noun in the modern language. ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/6 "2005-07-30T01:14:30Z")
See also this thread: [Female equivalent of brethren](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=75614) ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/7 "2005-07-30T01:34:25Z")
And from **John Mace** ’s cite, I see I mixed up which dialect was which… :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/8 "2005-07-30T01:55:06Z")
> [@Argent Towers](#): > > The plural of “ox” is “oxen.” Try saying “oxes” out loud, and it sounds weird because we’re not used to it. But we say “boxes” and “foxes” (are there any other words that end with “ox”?) A lot of pretentious Slashdot geeks like to say “boxen” when they’re referring to computers. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/9 "2005-07-30T02:43:13Z")
As a side note, I just finished reading [_The Unfolding of Language_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805079076/qid=1122691431/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1/104-8945000-3999126?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) (which I highly recommend, btw), and the author points out that plurals like man -\> men and goose -\> geese may look like a simple vowel change plural forming process, but it’s more complicated than that. He postulates that man (originally mann) went thru a stage where the plural was mann-iz (the -iz sound being common in I-E plurals) but that the “i” began to color the “a” (think of German umlaut where an “e” colors a vowel), turning it to “e”, and that the “z” was dropped off at some point. So, the plural of “man” started out as a simple plural process of adding “-iz”, but turned into a vowel change instead. Apparently the same thing happened in German, but to a much larger extent, leaving more of those plural forms than one finds in English. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/10 "2005-07-30T13:36:01Z")
Both words come from German. In German: Ox = Ochse Oxen = Ochsen Fox = Fuchs Foxes = Füchse So I’d attribute it to the inherited vagaries of the German language. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/11 "2005-07-31T14:14:21Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Well, we do have vixen. And, for those users of DEC machines, I’ve seen the plural Vaxen. Vixen appears to come from German füchsin “female fox”. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/12 "2005-07-31T14:48:01Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > Both words come from German. As does most of the English language (from Germanic languages, rather.) Is this -en common for all pluralisations in Germanic languages, or is it just an odd example? ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/13 "2005-07-31T14:53:23Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > As does most of the English language (from Germanic languages, rather.) Is this -en common for all pluralisations in Germanic languages, or is it just an odd example? En is a very common plural, but not the only one. Just -e is also a common pluralisation. I think it depends on the gender of the word _and_ the word structure. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2005, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/14 "2005-08-01T07:40:18Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > As does most of the English language (from Germanic languages, rather.) Is this -en common for all pluralisations in Germanic languages, or is it just an odd example? In \*vixen \* the ending -en is not a plural form. It’s the nearest pronounciation of German _füchsin_ in which -in indicates a feminin form: _Fuchs_ (male), _Füchsin_ (female). ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2005, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/15 "2005-08-01T08:54:58Z")
> [@Mr2001](#): > > A lot of pretentious Slashdot geeks like to say “boxen” when they’re referring to computers. Pretentious? It is to laugh! 😉 Seriously, the usage isn’t pretentious. Neither is Slashdot. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2005, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/16 "2005-08-01T09:12:25Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Seriously, the usage isn’t pretentious. Neither is Slashdot. The site itself isn’t, but there are certainly pretentious people on Slashdot. You know, the ones whose response to every Windows bug or DRM scare is “So what? It doesn’t affect me. I use Linux, listen to nothing but indie-label music, and watch nothing but Red vs. Blue. Maybe this will finally get everyone to switch to the things I like.” IME, those are the types who are most likely to say “boxen”. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2005, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/17 "2005-08-01T12:01:27Z")
> [@Mr2001](#): > > Maybe this will finally get everyone to switch to the things I like." IME, those are the types who are most likely to say “boxen”. And of course the worse thing that could possibly happen to them would be to wake up one morning to find that everyone **has** switched to things they like. Then they wouldn’t be special anymore and would have to find new obsessions. I’d never heard ‘boxen’. But now I plan to use it all the time, to as many people as possible, in the hope that Bill Gates may catch on to it one day. Then no-one will ever want to use it again. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2005, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-say-oxen-but-not-foxen/314827/18 "2005-08-01T12:12:07Z")
Since this is GQ: [http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/boxen.html](http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/boxen.html) Hackers that get their hacker cred from memorizing the jargon file (which, unlike some subcultures, is actually not an inherently pretentious way to acquire it), also use the term.