Singular/ Plural Words Worksheet- Irregular Plurals
Singular nouns refer to a single person, thing, place, or idea. Plural nouns mean more than one person, thing, place, or idea. For most regular nouns, it is sufficient to add the letter -s to the end of this name to make them plural.
Examples:
- Cat → cats
- Rose → roses
- Seed → seeds
- House→ houses
∗ Nouns are made plural by adding “-s, -es, -ies” suffixes according to which sound they end with.
Examples:
- Box → boxes
- Wish → wishes
- Bus → buses
- Peach → peaches
There are always exceptions. The words tomato, and potato are made plural by taking -es together with a few more words: tomatoes, potatoes, heroes, echoes, and torpedoes.
- While the words ending with the consonant “y” are made plural, the letter “y” at the end is converted to “i” and they become plural by taking the suffix -ies.
Examples:
- Candy→ candies
- Fairy → fairies
- Baby → babies
- City → cities
- For words with “f” before the last letter, “f” is converted to the letter “v” and -s is added to the end.
Examples:
- Life→ candies
- Wife → fairies
- Knife → babies
∗ For those whose last letter is “f”, the letter “f” is converted to the letter “v” and -es is added to the end.
Examples:
∗ In words ending with a consonant “s” and the letter before the last letter is “i”, the letter “i” is converted to the letter “e”. In short, we don’t add “-es” to the end, but we convert the last two letters to “-es”.
Examples:
- Diagnosis → diagnoses
- Thesis → theses
- Analysis → analyses
- Crisis → crises
- Oasis→ oases
Irregular Plurals
∗ Irregular nouns mean nouns that are not plural with an -s suffix, but whose plural form is a completely different word. Irregular plurals need to be memorized from lists or acquired over time.
List of Irregular Plurals
- Man→ men
- Woman → women
- Tooth→ teeth
- Child → children
- Person→ people
- Foot → feet
- Mouse→ mice
- Goose → geese
- Ox→ oxen
- Cactus → cacti
- Fungus → fungi
- Focus→ crises
- Nucleus → nuclei
- Datum → data
- Criterion→ criteria
- Phenomenon→ phenomena
- Die→ dice
∗ There are also irregular words that have the same singular and plural form.
Examples:
- Sheep → diagnoses
- Fish→ theses
- Deer → analyses
- Species → crises
- Aircraft→ oases
∗ The other interesting thing is that some nouns are always plural, and some are always singular.
Always plural: scissors, shorts, pants, trousers, jeans.
Always singular: love, news, livestock, bravery, money, slang, darts, athletics.
The Answer Key: men, wolf, children, sheep, leaves, foot, fish, teeth, person, oxen, knife, quizzes, goose.
