"He did many mischiefs." vs. "He made much mischief." – How are these different?

Question

He did many mischiefs.
He made much mischief.

What is the difference between the two sentences?

How does "mischief" differ from "mischiefs" and on what basis do we use "much" in second sentence?

Answer 1

We don't typically do mischiefs, we usually make mischief. However, we might do mischievous things.

(At least, that's how I typically hear the word used. Grammatically, though, it's an extremely flexible word – and you've done a “mischievous thing” by asking this vexing question!)

The difference here isn't so much the singular vs. the plural (i.e., mischief vs. mischiefs), it's more a matter of convention: how the word is typically used and what verbs are generally associated with it.

The phrases:

• do mischief
• make mischief
• work mischief
• do mischiefs

all pretty much mean the same thing: the stirring up of impish trouble.

I did some research using Google's ngram tool and found all four phrases of those phrases could be found in published works, and that do mischief was apparently a much more popular phrase in the 19th century.

Collins indicates that the word can refer to:

• irksome behavior,
• an inclination to do the behavior,
• the person doing the behavior, or
• the result of the behavior.

mischief (noun)

1. wayward but not malicious behaviour, usually of children, that causes trouble, irritation, etc
2. a playful inclination to behave in this way or to tease or disturb
3. injury or harm caused by a person or thing
4. a person, esp a child, who is mischievous
5. a source of trouble, difficulty, etc

It's not labeled as a mass noun, but it can function as one. As such, "many mischiefs" would refer to many different acts of mischief, while "much mischief" treats mischief as an uncountable noun.

I can't think of many words that are so adaptable. It would be as if the word food not only referred to what we ate, but also to the process of cooking it, and to the people preparing it as well – as if the word food could function as a synonym for chef and oven. The definitions found at Wordnik are equally versatile.

Having done all that research, I can't find anything grammatically wrong with

He did many mischiefs.

However, it doesn't pass my “ear test.” I can't say that it's never used, but I'll warn that it's probably rarely used in contemporary contexts.

Alexander Pope wrote in a letter:

Such in particular as have the meanness to do mischiefs in the dark, have seldom the courage to justify them in the face of day.

and who am I to tell Alexander Pope that he's wrong? However, I can warn my English learner friends: that language sounds more Shakespearian than contemporary.

I suppose I could tell you that, because the dictionary says it's okay, it must be perfectly normal. But I don't like to be such a mischief so mischievous.

Answer 2

As a noun, "mischief" isn't used very much these days. But it's a perfectly good word all the same. I use it all the time about the behavior of the cat whom I support.

If we substitute the word "kindness", which is still in common, everyday use, we can see that "make mischief" is an idiom because we don't say "make kindness" and there's no mischief sitting on the table at the end of the "making".

So "did many mischiefs" means "performed many mischievous acts" (such as when my cat pushes the papers on my desk and makes them crackle every time I turn my back, but is always sitting there innocently when I try to catch him doing it.). The acts are individual acts, in this construction, and there are many of them.

In "made much mischief", there might be just as many individual acts of mischief, but they're being lumped together conceptually and talked about as a group, not as individual acts. Which is why the singular "much" is used rather than the plural "many".

There are quite a few cases where individuals are treated as a group, and such cases have a name for the grammatical treatment: collective singular. It acknowledges that many individual entities make up the group, but their individuality is less important at the moment of speaking than their group membership. So the singular forms are used.

In Commonwealth English, it's not so common now because of US cultural imperialism, but in the past USAians were puzzled by the reverse form of collective singulars. I don't know whether there was ever a separate name for the practice, but entities with a single label would get plural verb forms used, e.g.: "The BBC/government/NHS have announced...". To many USAians it was as bad as pre-decimalisation money, completely impossible to understand. :-)