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.

• • Words ending with “s, z, x, sh, ch” become plural by taking the suffix -es.

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:

• Loaf→ loaves
• Leaf → leaves
• Elf → elves
• Half →  halves

∗ 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.