# Why the recent subject-verb disagreement epidemic? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2018, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968 "2018-07-15T21:52:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/41 "2018-07-16T17:20:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The other difference is that Americans usually use a definite article with our sports teams: The Browns always lose. The Cleveland Indians sometimes get to the World Series, but then blow it. The Cavs are going to suck without LeBron. But you’d never say “The Manchester United”, or “The Arsenal”, or “The Madrid Real”. No, but you would say, “The Red Devils”, “The Arse”, and “Los Blancos”. “The Madrid Real”?? You do know that the name of the club is Real Madrid (Club de Fútbol)? ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/42 "2018-07-16T17:44:41Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I’m not listening until you agree to drop that ridiculous “s” from “maths.” I’ve never taken a “mathematic” course in the US. It’s always “mathematics.” So which makes more sense as an abbreviation of mathematics, “math” or “maths”? ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/43 "2018-07-16T18:26:28Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Manchester –\> city name –\> singular; Manchester United –\> players –\> plural. > > You’re not even being internally consistent with your own peeve. **If** “Manchester United is the name of 1 soccer team and should therefore take the singular verb form” as you state in the OP, **then** “Yankees” also refers to 1 baseball team, and should also take the singular verb form". They either both refer to the team (singular), or they both refer to the players (plural). > So which is it? Does the name of the team refer to one single team, or does it refer to all of the players? I think it’s the absence of an “s” or “s sound” that is tripping you up. Thank you. That was my point. You had the patience to elaborate. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/44 "2018-07-16T18:46:16Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > So which makes more sense as an abbreviation of mathematics, “math” or “maths”? That depends on whether “mathematics,” as a noun, is the plural form of a word “mathematic,” or is itself a singular noun that happens to end in the letter “s.” I think it’s a singular noun, so should be abbreviated “math.” ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/45 "2018-07-16T19:55:50Z")
“The Beatles are…” but “Nirvana is…”. It’s not about whether the thing the word refers to is plural, it’s about whether the _word itself_ is plural. And “The Rolling Stones” is plural, but “Pink Floyd” is not. That’s why we’d say “The Houston Astros are…” but “The Miami Heat is…” or “Manchester United is…”. By the way, Legos are what you call more than one Lego piece. And the store that charges for bags is Aldi’s. And you can have kleenexes that weren’t manufactured by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation. I refuse to say “non-Kleenex-brand facial tissues”, because I am not a trademark lawyer and I don’t get paid enough to talk that way. Large multinational corporations don’t get to tell me how to speak. Your mileage may vary. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/46 "2018-07-16T20:00:11Z")
Want a Pringle? ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/47 "2018-07-16T21:37:46Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > “The Beatles are…” but “Nirvana is…”. It’s not about whether the thing the word refers to is plural, it’s about whether the _word itself_ is plural. And “The Rolling Stones” is plural, but “Pink Floyd” is not. That’s why we’d say “The Houston Astros are…” but “The Miami Heat is…” or “Manchester United is…”. This is it exactly, although I can think of one plural term where us Americans use the singular. That term is “United States”. I’ve also seen a certain amount of confusion about the Utah Jazz. The word _jazz_ is a collective, so usually gets a singular verb, but with /z/ as a last phoneme, it resembles a plural. And since most other sports nicknames are plural, there’s a tendency to make that a plural too. But not everyone does it. > [@](#): > > And the store that charges for bags is Aldi’s. And the use of the greengrocer’s apostophe for a grocery store is very apropos. > [@](#): > > And you can have kleenexes that weren’t manufactured by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation. I refuse to say “non-Kleenex-brand facial tissues”, I prefer the pseudo-Latin _kleenices_, myself. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/48 "2018-07-16T21:37:50Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > That depends on whether “mathematics,” as a noun, is the plural form of a word “mathematic,” or is itself a singular noun that happens to end in the letter “s.” I think it’s a singular noun, so should be abbreviated “math.” It used to be a pluralization of the singular noun “mathematic”, derived from the French _mathematique_. But the “singular” form is obsolete. I notice that the usage as plural continued into the early 1800s in England; the noun took plural verb forms. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/49 "2018-07-16T22:07:35Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I notice that the usage as plural continued into the early 1800s in England; the noun took plural verb forms. [Ngram](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mathematics+are%2Cmathematics+is&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmathematics%20are%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmathematics%20is%3B%2Cc0) of “mathematics are” vs. mathematics is". Note that there are false positives in both directions–a quick perusal of recent “mathematics are” are all phrases like “of which the makings of mathematics are a part” or “the signifieds themselves of mathematics are unreachable”. But the general trend and crossover in mid-late 1800’s is obvious. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/50 "2018-07-16T22:28:33Z")
I don’t think that “Aldi’s” is actually an example of the greengrocer’s apostrophe. The greengrocer’s apostrophe is a use of the apostrophe in forming a plural, like “Apple’s 10 cents a bushel”. But calling the discount grocery chain “Aldi’s” reflects an assumption that the store was founded by someone named Aldi, and that it is thus his store (a fairly common pattern in American store names; a grocery store near me is named “Sapell’s”, presumably because it’s owned by the Sapell family). So the apostrophe in “Aldi’s” would indicate a possessive, and so would be correct, if that were the store’s name. ---
**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 16, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/51 "2018-07-16T23:51:40Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > It’s not even a rule of thumb in North America either. For example we would say “New York” wins the world series, and also “The Red Sox win the world series.” > [@NetTrekker](#): > > “The police” is plural, so “are” is conventional. If you said “the police department” it would be singular…“is investigating”. Right. The singular of Police is Policeman or Police Officer or something along those lines. You would never say “A police came to my house yesterday”. ---
**Author:** ![Kiwi\_Fruit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kiwi_fruit/32/12_2.png) [@Kiwi\_Fruit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiwi_Fruit)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/52 "2018-07-17T00:56:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t think that “Aldi’s” is actually an example of the greengrocer’s apostrophe. The greengrocer’s apostrophe is a use of the apostrophe in forming a plural, like “Apple’s 10 cents a bushel”. But calling the discount grocery chain “Aldi’s” reflects an assumption that the store was founded by someone named Aldi, and that it is thus his store (a fairly common pattern in American store names; a grocery store near me is named “Sapell’s”, presumably because it’s owned by the Sapell family). So the apostrophe in “Aldi’s” would indicate a possessive, and so would be correct, if that were the store’s name. The chain was founded by Theo and Karl Albrecht. Your assumption seems to be ill founded and it is really a greengrocer’s apostrophe after all. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/53 "2018-07-17T01:21:08Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > I’ve never taken a “mathematic” course in the US. It’s always “mathematics.” So which makes more sense as an abbreviation of mathematics, “math” or “maths”? …“math.” > [@Kiwi\_Fruit](#): > > The chain was founded by Theo and Karl Albrecht. Your assumption seems to be ill founded and it is really a greengrocer’s apostrophe after all. The assumption is ill founded, but that doesn’t make it a greengrocer’s apostrophe. That’s his point. Or her point. Their point, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/54 "2018-07-17T02:23:51Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > > [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > > > Well, they had an extra ‘s’ sitting around after they removed it from ‘sports’. Had to go somewhere I guess. > > We use both "sports"and “sport” in British english whereas we pretty much never use the word “math” I suspect the frequency at which the word “sport” is used (instead of “sports”) is close to the frequency at which the word “maths” is used. That is, you use up all the extra “s” letters with “maths” that you have to resort to using “sports” on occasion. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/55 "2018-07-17T07:15:40Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > I suspect the frequency at which the word “sport” is used (instead of “sports”) is close to the frequency at which the word “maths” is used. That is, you use up all the extra “s” letters with “maths” that you have to resort to using “sports” on occasion. 🙂 I know this is all incidental, knockabout stuff but…I think you’d be very wrong. The incidence of using “math” is vanishingly small to zero, “sports” however is used as a matter of course. e.g. My daughter had her school “sports” day just yesterday and very much enjoyed it. I’d say that both her and my son have tried many “sports” and are settling on the few that they like. I was watching TV just now and the “sports” reporter covered the World cup final, The Tour de France and Wimbledon final. My hiking hat “sports” a rather fine zipped pocket. My two friends were pranked at work but as good “sports” they took in in good humour. I couldn’t honestly write a similar paragraph for the use of “math” in Britain. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/56 "2018-07-17T14:02:17Z")
I think the point is that athletic endeavors are discussed much more often than applied logic, and that thus, even when you move an S over to every instance of the latter (converting it from “math” to “maths”), there are still some Ss left over, and so not every “sports” can be converted to “sport”. EDIT: Oh, and the American usage treats “sport” as a countable noun, and in addition treats “sports” as an uncountable noun. In American English, one might say “Football is a sport”, or “Football, baseball, and basketball are the three biggest American sports”. That’s a countable noun, with normal singular and plural forms. On the other hand, we might also say “Terry Bradshaw is a sports commentator”, even though the only sport he commentates on is football. Or “ESPN is a sports network”, where here it refers to many different sports. Or one person might ask another “Were you in sports in high school?”, even though the respondant might well have only been in one. It’s my understanding that a Brit would use “sport” in these contexts, rather than “sports” ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/57 "2018-07-17T14:10:29Z")
Keep in mind that English and American English are not exactly the same language. I’m slightly irked by the way the English say “schedule” with a soft “C” instead of the “K” sound, but I keep in mind the old saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968/58 "2018-07-18T06:43:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think the point is that athletic endeavors are discussed much more often than applied logic, and that thus, even when you move an S over to every instance of the latter (converting it from “math” to “maths”), there are still some Ss left over, and so not every “sports” can be converted to “sport”. Oh, yeah. That’d make sense. > [@](#): > > EDIT: > Oh, and the American usage treats “sport” as a countable noun, and in addition treats “sports” as an uncountable noun. In American English, one might say “Football is a sport”, or “Football, baseball, and basketball are the three biggest American sports”. That’s a countable noun, with normal singular and plural forms. On the other hand, we might also say “Terry Bradshaw is a sports commentator”, even though the only sport he commentates on is football. Or “ESPN is a sports network”, where here it refers to many different sports. Or one person might ask another “Were you in sports in high school?”, even though the respondant might well have only been in one. It’s my understanding that a Brit would use “sport” in these contexts, rather than “sports” No, we’d use “sports” as well (as likely as not). Certainly to these average UK ears those usages sound perfectly fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-recent-subject-verb-disagreement-epidemic/817968.md?page=2)