It seems the correct sentence would be :
Raise up the dead
Though "dead" is supposed to be about dead things or persons, which would be plural. So why wouldn't we say :
Raise up the deads
?
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Sign up to join this communityIt seems the correct sentence would be :
Raise up the dead
Though "dead" is supposed to be about dead things or persons, which would be plural. So why wouldn't we say :
Raise up the deads
?
the dead (when used as a noun) is what is known as an uncountable noun. It is similar to many other words which describe something made up of a varying number of other things, or where divisions are hard to define, such as "rice", or "music".
For these words, singular vs. plural does not actually make any sense (you would not say "playing musics", because no matter how much of it you play, it's all still just (uncountable) "music"). Likewise, with uncountable nouns (as the name implies) you can't talk about numbers of them, or use the indefinite article (which implies there's potentially more than one), so for example, you also cannot say "a dead" (you would instead need to say "a dead person").
(Alternately, there is also another way to look at this in the case of dead: The noun "dead" is essentially short for "dead people", so it is arguably already plural. It has no singular form.)
Certain groups of people are referred to using 'the' followed by an adjective, when the group members share a condition denoted by the adjective. The young, the old, the newborn, the dead, the brave, the rich, the poor (etc).
Adjectives are often used without nouns.
To refer to some well-known groups of people
The structure the + adjective is used to talk about some well-known groups of people. Examples are: the blind, the deaf, the unemployed, the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the dead etc.
Dead is a condition to put on an object. You wouldn't say "Look at those deads people, you would say "look at those dead people". The people is implied at the end of the sentence. So in actuality you are saying "Raise the dead [people/person]." where the bracket is omitted.