Words ending in -o
form plural by adding '-s'. In some resources I have read some of these words needs '-es' to make plural (e.g. echo, buffalo). However it seems both form of all such words (-s or -es) are recorded in dictionaries. So is it correct to form plural form of all o-ending word by only adding '-s'?
2 Answers
There is some good guidance given by Oxford Dictionaries (OUP) here showing quite a number of examples.
The basic guidance is
Nouns ending in -o can add either -s or -es in the plural, and some can be spelled either way.
As a general rule, most nouns ending in -o add -s to make the plural:
Those which have a vowel before the final -o always just add -s:
a list of the most common nouns ending in -o that are always spelled with -es in the plural:
singular plural buffalo buffaloes domino dominoes echo echoes embargo embargoes hero heroes mosquito mosquitoes potato potatoes tomato tomatoes torpedo torpedoes veto vetoes
some of the common nouns ending in -o that can be spelled with either -s or -es in the plural:
singular plural banjo banjos or banjoes cargo cargos or cargoes flamingo flamingos or flamingoes fresco frescos or frescoes
So there are some that 'require' the -es although there isn't a hard and fast 'rule' that you can apply.
Consider zero and hero; indistinguishable in their form and yet zeros is the standard plural of zero while heroes is the standard plural of hero.
"Plurals of nouns". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/plurals-of-nouns (accessed September 21, 2014).
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As I said in the question actually most of listed form are correct in both form. Sep 21, 2014 at 11:05
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@PHPst I think what Oxford Dictionaries are suggesting is that 'echos', 'heros', 'potatos', etc. are 'wrong' in whatever sense OD class them as wrong - perhaps 'wrong' means extremely uncommon in modern writing.– FrankSep 21, 2014 at 11:27
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Please limit your answer to a list of such words ( 'echos', 'heros',… ) so I can mark your answer as accepted. The Mina's link also contain some of these words. Thanks. Sep 21, 2014 at 12:54
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1see also my favorite unclear plural: english.stackexchange.com/questions/134628/plural-for-photo Sep 22, 2014 at 21:07
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"zeros" is the standard plural? You learn something new each day... Anyway, it seems that the "safe bet" is actually to always add -es. Oct 13, 2014 at 9:20
Acording to this excellent presentaion, there are only a few words that must be pluriezed using only -es. Here is a list of such words:
- potato
- tomato
- echo
- hero
- veto
- embargo
- torpedo
(feel free to add any missing word to the list)
's
: An apostrophe may be used to separate the plural suffix from the base with letters, numbers (notably dates), symbols, abbreviations, and words used metalinguistically: (i) p's and q's, 1960's, &'s, Ph.D.'s, if's and but's (ii) She got four A's and two B's. This practice is less common than it used to be; with dates and abbreviations ending in an upper case letter, the form without the apostrophe is now more usual: in the 1960s, two candidates with Ph.D.s."