English noun/Catalogs/English irregular nouns
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Template:English irregular nouns footerThe normal way to form a plural noun in English is to add s. Words ending in -ŷ add -íes. But there are also many irregular nouns, with plural forms from Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Hebrew and other languages. (The accents, which are not part of the language, are included to show stress and pronunciation: see English spellings for a table and English phonemes for the IPA.)
Nouns in -o which always have -ôes in the plural are included below; others are regular, having -ôs, while búffalo, càrgo, hâlo, mosquìto (-k-), mótto, nô, tornâdo, volcâno and zêro can be seen with both -ôs and -ôes.
Nouns in -us which always have -î in the plural are listed below, while cáctus, fôcus, fúngus, óctopus and sýllabus can have both -î and -uses (fôcî has a hissing c: *fôssŷe).
Nouns in -sís (-ssíss) - análysis, áxis, bâsis, crîsis, diagnôsis, émphasis, hypóthesis, neurôsis, oâsis, parénthesis, synópsis, sýnthesis and thêsis - have their plurals in -sês (-ssêez): análysês (*ənáləssêez) etc.
Apart from vŏrtex, plural vŏrtices (-tíssêez), nouns in -ex and -íx (âpex, appéndix, cërvix, índex and mâtrix) have plurals in both -ícês and -íxes (-íxíz).
The following have the same form in the singular and plural: bárracks, cód, cróssroads, dêer animal (= dêar loved, expensive), dîce, físh (dîe as the singular of dîce and físhes as the plural of físh are archaic), gállows, hálibut, héadquarters, mêans, óffspring, përch fish (përch position has përches), pîke, sálmon (*sámmon), sêries, shêep, spêcies (-shíz), tròut and tûna.
Prefixed nouns are not included if their plural endings are the same as that of the root noun: for example the plural of snôwmán is snôwmén.