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The correct plural of "life" is "lives." "Lives," the plural of the noun "life" is pronounced differently that "lives," the verb. Go figure.
by mattmillr 15y ago
The correct plural of "life" is "lives." "Lives," the plural of the noun "life" is pronounced differently that "lives," the verb. Go figure.
- WA 15y agoMakes sense, thanks. This is like first class English and thus a bit embarrassing, but somehow it looked odd to me.
- DevX101 15y agoIt IS odd. English makes many inconsistent and arbitrary rules.
- jsdalton 15y agoThis is true, although the "rule" in this case isn't entirely inconsistent: life -> lives wife -> wives elf -> elves half -> halves leaf -> leaves
- losvedir 15y agoExcept chief -> chiefs brief -> briefs Maple Leaf -> Maple Leafs (Canadian Hockey team)
- jsdalton 15y agoYeah, my point wasn't so much that there are not exceptions, but that there are frequent patterns in the English language. Rather than throwing up your hands in defeat and saying, "The English language is totally inconsistent; the only way to learn it is to memorize each arbitrary word form," the key is to familiarize yourself with these patterns so that at a minimum you can make a better guess next time. Hopefully, WA learned today not just that the plural of "life" is "lives" but that, in general, when a noun ends in -f or -fe it usually changes to -ve. So if tomorrow he sees a sign that says "5 loaves of bread for $1" it won't catch him off guard like the title of this submission did.
- perigrin 15y agoThe last example is a proper noun(-phrase) and wouldn't necessarily follow the "standard" pluralization rules anyway. If you think about it you're not making "Leaf" plural you're making the noun-phrase "Maple Leaf" plural, and who knows what rules apply then.