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A black and a white dog means "two dogs".
A black and white dog means "one dog".

Then what about black and white dogs?

Does this mean two things? "Dogs, each of black and white color" and "dogs of black and dogs of white"?

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    I think this is a good question. I'm not sure why it was downvoted, let alone twice.
    – user230
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 14:14

1 Answer 1

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Unfortunately the plural can designate either group: (1) bicolor dogs, and (2) black dogs and white dogs.

They can be disambiguated as follows:

black dogs and white dogs

black-and-white dogs

black and white brindle dogs (brindle means several colors on the same dog)

dogs, both black and white,...

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    so "white and black dogs" means two things?: "bicolor dogs" and "white dogs and black dogs, which are not bicolor?"
    – user2492
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:33
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    potentially, yes.
    – CocoPop
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:38
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    so you should reflect that...as it is written, its still ambiguous. But thank you very much.
    – user2492
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:41
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    did you perhaps not read (2) in the first line of my response?
    – CocoPop
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:48
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    Thank you for your insights, and especially for your restriction on how I would and wouldn't call a black-and-white dog. Fortunately, I was a dog breeder for 20 years and black and white dogs are either spotted or brindle, as is this: ebay.com/sch/…
    – CocoPop
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 17:50

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