English
How do you make words plural?
Quick answer
A plural means more than one. Most nouns add -s (cats) or -es (boxes), but some change in other ways, like babies, leaves, mice and children.
In one sentence
A plural is the form of a noun that means more than one, like one cat, two cats.
Explained
The word for a single thing is singular; the word for more than one is plural. Most nouns follow a handful of patterns.
1. Add -s. This works for most words: cat → cats, book → books, tree → trees.
2. Add -es after s, x, z, ch and sh: bus → buses, fox → foxes, buzz → buzzes, church → churches, dish → dishes. Say them aloud and you will hear the extra beat, /iz/, that the e makes room for.
3. Words ending in y.
- consonant + y: change y to i and add -es: baby → babies, city → cities, party → parties
- vowel + y: just add -s: day → days, toy → toys, key → keys
4. Words ending in f or fe often change to -ves: leaf → leaves, wolf → wolves, knife → knives. But not always: roof → roofs, chief → chiefs.
5. Words ending in o are mixed: potato → potatoes, tomato → tomatoes, hero → heroes, but piano → pianos, photo → photos, zoo → zoos.
6. Irregular plurals change inside the word or use an old ending: man → men, woman → women, child → children, foot → feet, tooth → teeth, mouse → mice, person → people.
7. No change at all: sheep, fish, deer, aircraft.
Some nouns are uncountable and do not usually have a plural: rice, water, information, furniture, advice. We say some rice, not three rices.
fox
bus
leaf
mouse
tooth
Examples
| Singular | Plural | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| hat | hats | add -s |
| watch | watches | add -es |
| lorry | lorries | y → ies |
| monkey | monkeys | vowel + y |
| half | halves | f → ves |
| child | children | irregular |
Common mistakes
- Apostrophes in plurals. Banana's is wrong; plurals never need an apostrophe. See apostrophes.
- "Childrens" and "peoples". Children and people are already plural.
- Forgetting the y rule: babys, familys.
- Over-regularising: mouses, foots, tooths. Children do this because they have learned the main rule well.
Quick quiz
Plurals
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Question 1 of 5
What is the plural of box?
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For grown-ups
Related topics
Nouns
A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing or idea, such as teacher, Lagos, pencil or happiness.
Suffixes
A suffix is a group of letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning or job, like -ful in helpful, -ness in kindness or -ed in jumped.
Apostrophes
An apostrophe has two jobs. It shows where letters are missing in a contraction (can't, it's) and shows that something belongs to someone (the dog's bone, the girls' team).
Determiners
A determiner is a word that comes before a noun to show which one or how many, such as a, an, the, this, those, my, some, every or three.
Homophones
Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and usually different spellings, like there, their and they're, or see and sea.
Prefixes
A prefix is a group of letters added to the start of a word to change its meaning, like un- in unhappy, re- in replay or dis- in disappear.