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Plurale tantum
 
 
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A plurale tantum (Latin for in the plural only; plural form: pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the plural
Plural

Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers....
 form and does not have a singular
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
 variant, though it may still refer to one or many of the objects it names. Many languages have pluralia tantum, such as the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 words shears, scissors, pants, and trousers, the Swedish
Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
 word inälvor ("intestines"), or the Dutch word hersenen ("brains").

The term for a noun which appears only in the singular form is singulare tantum (plural: singularia tantum), for example the English words "dust" and "wealth".






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A plurale tantum (Latin for in the plural only; plural form: pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the plural
Plural

Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers....
 form and does not have a singular
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
 variant, though it may still refer to one or many of the objects it names. Many languages have pluralia tantum, such as the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 words shears, scissors, pants, and trousers, the Swedish
Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
 word inälvor ("intestines"), or the Dutch word hersenen ("brains").

The term for a noun which appears only in the singular form is singulare tantum (plural: singularia tantum), for example the English words "dust" and "wealth". Singulare tantum is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as: "Gram. A word having only a singular form; esp. a non-count noun." In the English language, such words are almost always uncountable nouns
Mass noun

In linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary from language to language....
.

In English, quantifying a plurale tantum noun requires a measure word
Measure word

In linguistics, measure words, known more formally as numeral classifiers and also called counters, count words, counter words, or counting words, are words that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate the count of nouns....
, for example one pair of scissors instead of *one scissors. In other languages, special numeral forms are used in such cases. In Polish
Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
, for example, "one pair of eyeglasses" is expressed as either jedne okulary (one-plur. glasses-plur.) or jedna para okularów (one-sing. pair-sing. glasses-gen. plur.). For larger quantities, "collective numeral" forms are available: troje drzwi (three doors), piecioro skrzypiec (five violins). Compare these to the ordinary numeral forms found in trzy filmy / piec filmów (three films / five films).

See also

  • Elohim
    Elohim

    Elohim is a Hebrew language word which expresses concepts of divinity. It is apparently related to the Hebrew word El , though morphology it consists of the Hebrew word Eloah with a plural suffix....
  • English plural
    English plural

    In the English language, nouns are inflection for grammatical number?that is, Grammatical number or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed....
  • Singulative number
  • Synesis
    Synesis

    Synesis is a traditional grammatical/rhetorical term derived from Ancient Greek language .A constructio kata synesin means a grammatical construction in which a word takes the grammatical gender or grammatical number not of the word with which it should regularly agree, but of some other word implied in that word....
  • Wiktionary list of English pluralia tantum.