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Plurale tantum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Pluralia tantum)
A plurale tantum (plural: pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the plural form and does not have a singular variant, though it may still refer to one or many of the objects it names. Many languages have pluralia tantum, such as the English words "scissors" and "pants", or the Swedish word inälvor "intestines".
The term for a noun which appears only in the lonely 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."[1] In the English language, such words are almost always uncountable nouns.
- ^ The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition, p2871.