Friday, February 12, 2010

If the ploral word for mouse is mice, does that mean that the ploral word for spouce is spice?

Okay! I obviously spelled SOUSE incorrectly the last time I posted this question, and thus broke some kind of geek/loser code of conduct because I got some pretty rediculous feedback so I figured I'd give you people another chance to prove you can look past spelling errors, and actually use that thing....oh yeah, YOUR IMAGINATION!If the ploral word for mouse is mice, does that mean that the ploral word for spouce is spice?
It is plural, not ploral and spouse, not spouce.


And no it's spouses. But why is the plural of goose, geese when the plural of moose isn't meese?If the ploral word for mouse is mice, does that mean that the ploral word for spouce is spice?
Well, those are good ones, but the ones that get me are the ones that are both singluar AND plural! In my head, more than one fish will always be fishes!!





Also, the ones that end in ';s'; and are pluralized by adding an ';i'; always kill me because there are actually only a few, but there are lots of ';s'; words that get the ';i'; even thouth they don't need them: penis is pluralized by adding ';es'; but I've seen it numerous times, even in medical journals, as ';peni.';
The answer is:





No, English is very irregular. There are exceptions to every rule in English, and you've encountered one.
If by ';spouce'; you mean ';spouse'; as in wife/husband, no. The plural of spouse is spouses, spice is something else.
I imagine you mean p-l-u-r-a-l not ';ploral';
It was a noble attempt, friend. But you will see, from the answers to this question, that many of us are completely lacking a sense of humor about language.





';Souse';, a drunk, could CERTAINLY be pluralized by saying ';sice,'; or ';spouse'; made plural with ';spice';--and why would ANYONE object to that obvious play on words? Is there anywhere a man or woman who doesn't find the idea of more than one spouse spicy?





Similarly, there are other plays on words that go begging: E.g, I refer to the openings at the ends of a hose as 'hostrils.' Nobody gets the joke.





Ah, well, one gets more or less used to being surrounded by knee-jerk gravitas. Or at least, one stops crying about it. Only took me fifty years for that, and by the time I'm eighty, I should sound quite like a randy kookaburra, for laughing all the time at my fellow man's vanity.
If you write the word ';ploral'; twice, is that plural?
However you spell it the answer is still no!

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