Why there's no such thing as a 'bicep': A tour of words that sound like plurals but aren't

No kudo for clamping the forcep on your bicep

Yahtzee
(Image credit: iStock)

Usually English plurals are pretty easy. Just add s: one dog, two dogs. We know some plurals don't use s: children, deer. There are some nouns that we seem to use only in the plural: thanks, congratulations, scissors. And we know some words ending in s are not plurals: prowess, radius. But sometimes we go off the rails a bit… Here are 10 words that can make even the most confident speakers question their grip on the English plural.

Kudos

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James Harbeck

James Harbeck is a professional word taster and sentence sommelier (an editor trained in linguistics). He is the author of the blog Sesquiotica and the book Songs of Love and Grammar.