Can you suggest a word in the English language which needs a prefix to be converted to a plural form?
123667
Plenty of nouns change the second letter to become plural (man->men, goose->geese) but does anything change its first letter.  I've hunted high and low over the internet, and spent ages browsing the questions at  but I can't find anything.
58704
I'd always thought that words like "physics" and "mathematics" were singular: after all, we say "physics is the study of…" etc. But apparently, according to the the comments , each of these words is actually a "plural noun [usually treated as singular]":   (highlighting/ellipsis added by me) (NOAD = New Oxford American Dictionary)  One, Is this categorization valid? That is, is it correct to say, as the NOAD does, that these words are indeed plural (but treated as singular), rather than to say that they are singular? The accepted answer on that question, by user RegDwigнt, has a different analysis that speaks in terms of “news” being "uncountable", "used with singular verbs", and "etymologically, it used to be a plural form", and thereby carefully avoids addressing this issue, of whether these nouns are indeed plural-treated-as-singular. So my question remains.  Two, If so, what makes these words plural? Is it the fact that they end in s? (Surely "bus" is not plural?) Is it history? (Were they used as plural at some time? How far back in history does one go to decide whether a noun is singular or plural?) Is it the fact that they don't have any distinct forms treated as plural?  Most importantly, why do we even have a grammatical category of "plural nouns treated as singular"? What purpose does it serve, and how are such nouns functionally distinguishable from nouns that are actually singular? When/if the reason is history, is there a rationale for saying "plural nouns treated as singular" rather than "singular nouns that were formerly plural"?  Edit: My question isn't just about "-ics" words, but all words in the category "plural nouns treated as singular" (assuming that the category isn't just -ics words).  Edit 2: The image and part "One" of the question were added later; previously I took for granted that the categorization was valid.
1964
In AmE (and probably other dialects as well) there are certain place names and other proper nouns that either have a compulsory definite article or a compulsory lack of one attached to them.   For example:     The Upper West Side - Neighborhood in New York City with a compulsory The.   Midtown (Manhattan) - Compulsory lack of The.   Google - Compulsory lack of The to the point of .   Facebook - Compulsory lack of The .      Then there are others which are pseudo-plurals:     The Bronx -  Always gets The and is occasionally treated as plural.   Yonkers - Never gets The, never treated as a plural.    My question:  Is there a name for this phenomenon?  I know that the rules of articles in English are very fluid, but is there a rhyme or reason to this?
32966
Specifically I'm looking for an antonym of the infinitive rather than the noun. For example, "fragrance" is an antonym of "stink" (the noun), but you can't say "Wow, that fragrants" or "Wow that fragrances" in the way you can say "Wow that stinks".
26859
Sentences constructed with a word written in the singular and parenthetically in the plural are straightforward when that word does not end in -y, e.g.:     List all applicable employee(s).   How does one handle words ending in -y? Is this correct:     I will attend the party(ies).
58215
I was just copyediting  and my native English speaker Sprachgefühl told me I had to correct the grammar of one sentence:     ... 5–6 weeks are a lot of time ...   by changing the are to is. But as I was doing so I started wondering why is it that in this case it seems that I have to make the verb disagree with the plural subject?  So is my feeling for English going bad or if I did the right thing, how could I explain this to somebody who's learning English for instance?
91751
All my life, I have been confused with choosing plural or singular form to represent one-one correspondence notion.     Only those who qualify will be awarded a certificate.   or      Only those who qualify will be awarded certificates.   ?  Another example, let us consider the following:  "Each student gets one pencil". But it becomes ambiguous if I rewrite in plural form as "Students get pencils".  I hope someone can give me a general rule to overcome my confusion. :-)
21822
For example, "word" is a word, "adjectival" is adjectival, etc. Is there a term for this? Something like a set that includes itself, but not quite. I want to call it "autoinclusive"; would that work linguistically?
74575
Should I use singular or plural after one or more?  Example:      One or more [signal/signals]
12706
While looking at the part of speech of the noun "thanks" in an online dictionary I noticed that it was a plural noun and wondered if it could be used in singular form. Glancing at the origin it appears that the old English word "thanc" was once used as the singular form of this noun. I assume it would be appropriate at that time period to say "I have a thank!" if you felt thankful for a single thing instead of being limited to always say "I have thanks!" as we do in modern English.   Nowadays, I believe we only use the plural form "thanks" as the noun in all cases. We can never have a single "thank". Instead we can only have "thanks"! I find this odd! It would make sense to have kept the singular form of the noun. Often we are grateful for a single action or event and it seems more accurate to have a single "thank" rather than many "thanks".   Is there any known specific background history as to why this is?
7463
A friend wants to write,   There is no hardware to purchase, no additional software to install and no key fobs to worry about.   This is awkward because the verb "is" doesn't match up with the third item, which is plural and demands "There are" as the subject. However,    There is no hardware to purchase, no additional software to install and there are no key fobs to worry about.   sounds awkward as well.  Is there a good workaround for this problem where some list items are singular and some are plural, so they don't share a common verb?
39891
I guess “optional plural” is the correct term.  I’m referring to things like    It can be found at the following location(s). Please pick up your ticket(s).   But how do I do that to a word that ends in&nbsp;‑y? Take category for example: “category(s)” doesn’t seem correct, because categorys is a misspelling.  But everything else I have tried looks ridiculous.  What’s the correct approach here?
37862
According to this , if at least one of the nouns involved is plural then it should take the plural form of the verb. Otherwise, it should take the singular form of the verb. But in the last part it says not all grammars agree to those rules thus proximity rule applies. However, it doesn't explain when to apply the proximity rule and when not to use the former rules.
28466
I work with a company whose name is frequently reduced to an initialism (acronym).  Let's say the name is &quot;Cool Computer Systems&quot; (CCS).  I am engaged in an ongoing, bloody battle with the marketing department, wherein they insist the following apostrophe use is correct:  Buy CCS' New Product.  Reading that line brings visions of crying 4th grade teachers and librarians to mind.  I am quite certain that it should be written:  Buy CCS's New Product.   UPDATE: The examples are in title case because the sentence is the subject line of an e-mail.  UPDATE: Their argument is that &quot;Systems&quot; is plural.  I say that plurality doesn't matter, because &quot;Systems&quot; is part of the name.  The name as a whole should be handled as a singular entity, because the company is, in fact, a single, legal entity.  Thus, the possessive form should be written:  The Emperor's clothes Cool Computer Systems's clothes CSS's clothes
13078
Something a bit professional sounding?  In a scenario where there was also a bunch of Requirements, this situation could be easily solved by labelling one as Required and this specific bunch of things as Optional. But in an independent context, where no requirements exist to provide contextual flavor, what can be a concise way of referring to a bunch of things that would be great if you could have / have access to, but they're not things you need to have / have access to.  Perhaps the word which fits -  Required : Optional :: Requirements : ????  ETA: Though I'm also hoping for a better word than optional which also conveys the extra / positive nature of 'it would be really good to have this, even if it's not a requirement'.
110831
Head or tail sound fine to my ESL ears.  What's the reasoning behind the plural usage?  I looked it up on etymonline but didn't find anything interesting.
113437
When stating a general fact/preference on countable nouns, singular or plural is more suitable and natural? Example 1 :  I like apple. or I like apples.  Example 2:  I like eating apple. or I like eating apples.