Plural of Nouns
To talk about more than one thing, we usually change a noun into its plural form. Most plurals are regular, but some nouns follow special rules and a few are completely irregular.
Regular nouns
This is the most common rule. Just add -s to the noun.
- cat → cats
- wall → walls
- teacher → teachers
Nouns ending in -s, -ss, -ch, -sh, -x, -z
When the noun ends in one of these sounds, we add -es so the word is easy to say.
- bus → buses
- wish → wishes
- coach → coaches
- box → boxes
Nouns ending in a consonant + y
If a consonant comes before the final y, change y to -ies.
- puppy → puppies
- family → families
But if a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) comes before the y, just add -s.
- boy → boys
- play → plays
Nouns ending in -f or -fe
The -f or -fe often changes to -ve before adding the plural -s.
- knife → knives
- leaf → leaves
- wife → wives
- half → halves
Some -f nouns are regular, though:
- roof → roofs
- chief → chiefs
- cliff → cliffs
- chef → chefs
Nouns ending in -o
Some add -es, others just -s. You need to learn these by heart.
- potato → potatoes
- tomato → tomatoes
- photo → photos
- piano → pianos
- studio → studios
Irregular plurals
These do not follow a rule – learn them as pairs.
- man → men
- woman → women
- policeman → policemen
- child → children
- person → people
- foot → feet
- tooth → teeth
- mouse → mice
- louse → lice
- goose → geese
- ox → oxen
Nouns that don't change
A few nouns have the same singular and plural form.
- sheep → sheep
- deer → deer
- crossroads → crossroads
Difficult / academic plurals
Words from Latin and Greek often keep their original endings.
- basis → bases
- thesis → theses
- analysis → analyses
- crisis → crises
- cactus → cacti
- appendix → appendices
Compound nouns
These are nouns that combine more words that might be connected with a hyphen (-). To create plural, they follow different rules. They either add -s to the end of the whole compound, or require -s to be added in the middle of the compound.
One of the rules is that we add the plural -s to the main noun of the phrase. However, this is a complex topic. Some examples follow:
- full moon → full moons
- son-in-law → sons-in-law
- passer-by → passers-by
- man-eater → man-eaters
- grown-up → grown-ups
