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Plural forms that do not follow regular spelling patterns.
Some nouns form the plural in ways other than adding -s or -es.
Irregular plurals follow historical spelling patterns and must often be learned individually.
Some nouns form the plural by changing the internal vowel.
Examples include man → men, woman → women, foot → feet, tooth → teeth, goose → geese and mouse → mice.
A small number of nouns form the plural with -en.
Examples include child → children and ox → oxen.
Some nouns have identical singular and plural forms.
Examples include sheep, deer, fish (in many contexts), aircraft, spacecraft, series and species.
Some Latin nouns retain their traditional plural forms.
Examples include datum → data, bacterium → bacteria, curriculum → curricula and alumnus → alumni.
Some Greek nouns retain traditional plural forms.
Examples include phenomenon → phenomena, criterion → criteria and analysis → analyses.
Some borrowed nouns have both English and traditional plural forms.
Examples include formulas/formulae, indexes/indices, appendixes/appendices and cactuses/cacti.
Many nouns ending in -is form the plural by changing -is to -es.
Examples include analysis → analyses, crisis → crises, thesis → theses and hypothesis → hypotheses.
Many Greek nouns ending in -on form the plural in -a.
Examples include phenomenon → phenomena and criterion → criteria.
Some plural forms differ in meaning from their singular forms.
Examples include people/persons, fishes/fish and brothers/brethren.
Some compound nouns form the plural on the main noun rather than at the end.
Examples include mothers-in-law, commanders-in-chief and passers-by.
Some nouns exist only in the plural form.
Examples include clothes, trousers, scissors, binoculars, surroundings and premises.
Some nouns end in -s but are grammatically singular.
Examples include news, mathematics, physics, economics and linguistics when referring to academic subjects.
Subject-verb agreement follows the grammatical number of the noun.
Irregular plural nouns take plural verbs, while singular nouns ending in -s usually take singular verbs.
Do not apply regular plural endings to irregular nouns.
Common errors include childs, mouses, criterions, phenomenons and informations. Learn irregular forms individually.