h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mycroft! My hero! - - at last someone else who spells it "rooves" - I lost an argument on that one several months ago, having learnt at school that words ending in "f" all have "ves" for the plural. No one agreed with me, not even WS.

So if you can come up with the etymology I shall be forever in your debt!

Mycroft! My hero! - - at last someone else who spells it "rooves" - I lost an argument on that one several months ago, having learnt at school that words ending in "f" all have "ves" for the plural. No one agreed with me, not even WS.

So if you can come up with the etymology I shall be forever in your debt!

hi

sorry to be a killjoy but I am firmly in the 'roofs' camp. This is largely because I tend to put my faith in Chambers English Dictionary.

Chambers gives only 'roofs' as the plural of 'roof' but 'hoofs' or 'hooves' as equally valid plural forms of 'hoof'.

As they say in the States, "Go figure!".

Spiff

to Mycroft and let me add my support to TC's before the inevitable rush of nay-sayers clamour in support of K's wrongly re-educated Yankee spelling.
Elves, shelves, twelves (as opposed to twelfths), etc.
Hope the argument won't divide us in halves...
But I concede it's different for spoofs, poofs and profs and all the double 'ff' endings.
jwf

Oh dear - I hadn't looked at this thread for a while, and a couple of hours ago I was stuck in the very same roofs/rooves dilemma in the creationism vs. evolution thread, and eventually plumped for roofs.@'-'@

However, it *is* a point of debate among linguists - I'm sure Stephen Pinker mentions it in The Language Instinct, or possibly in Words and Rules, and I think the general view is that there is a transition going on to the simpler 'fs' form.

I'm not sure about twelves though - doesn't that mean multiple 12s of something, rather different to twelfths?

Bugger - that should have been a blush

Well, it *is* getting late, I've been staring at this screen for 16 hours, and even my browser's feeling very, very ...

Hi

Perhaps it is not the most important subject in the world, but for what it's worth:

roof - roofs

hoof - hoofs, (alt.) hooves

dwarf - dwarfs, (rare) dwarves

and yet 'calf' - 'calves', 'calfs'

spoof - spoofs

POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE - Poof - poofs (whether a term of abuse or something to put your feet up on!)

mouth - mouths (no-one would ever dream of saying 'mouves' [unless they were a speaker of Estuary English!])

Don't know what the rule is, but I hope this is relevant!



Spiff

Basing my knowledge on a disney production, isn't it Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?

I didn't even know hoofs and calfs were valid, always thought it was hooves and calves. Will remember this the next time I am playing scrabble.

I think the general idea is that irregular plurals have to be remembered, whereas regular one can be constructed on-the-fly from rules (sometimes, inplicitly learned rules).
If an irregular plural reinforced by common usage, it can end up being supplanted by the default regular ending.

Similar things happen with rarely used verbs - irregulars can become partly regularised as a result of neglect, or in the case of verbs where whole tenses or particular usages are sufficiently unused, and especially verbs which in English are close in meaning to a much more common verb, pieces can fall out of use to the extent where only a partial memory persits.

Take the case of 'wrought' (built / made / created / contructed / formed), similar sounding irregular tenses seem to have faded away. I suppose 'wright', and in 'wheelwright' may be another relic from irregular days, but more in the form of a noun.
The actual source verb is 'work' (at least it is now), and the more regular past tense 'worked' is the one we actually use.

In the case of some words, archaic usage may be preserved due to the association with deliberately old-fashioned writings (religion, fairytales, etc.), so that could help explain 'dwarves', whereas 'hooves' seems likely to sustain itself since there aren't many hoofed creatures with only one hoof.

Potholer said he was tired and logging off more than halv an hour ago.
And now he's still dancing with the cloven hooved Get thee abed, sirra!

Wharves.
And if there were a transporter accident on StarTrekNexGen, Worfs.

Rats !
Having been a "roofs" "hooves" man for longer than I care to recall, I find that the absolutely huge "Concise OED" gives precedence to "rooves" "hoofs".

My friend who is no stranger to rows of pink tents uses the plural of "poof" as "pooves". He's too big (and intelligent) for me to argue with. (Pardon the grammar.)

Whilst I'm at it, my father always used the spellings "shew, shewed and shewn" (show etc. to me). Other than that he was rational.

There is a difference between pooves and pouffes (alternate poofs?) in my idiolect. I've heard 'pouffies' for the latter (the things all of us may sit on)

My friend's fellow pooves may have camp pouffes, I had never thought to question furnishing and seating arrangements.

I am a roofs person myself - there is a regluar advert in our local paper for a company that repairs 'rooves' and it has always bothered me. I don't have any dictionary support for this - 'rooves' has just always struck me as being wrong.

As for pooves, I have never had occasion to think of it. But I will, in the next week, have the opportunity of solicting the opinions several of my acquaintance who may have an opinion and will report back.

Beth

First of all, it is dwarfs and elfs, not dwarves and elves. Tolkien invented the plurals dwarves and elves to show that his were different species, not to be confused with the normal dwarfs of real life and the elfs of folklore. He specifically said this in one of his books (The Hobbit?).

My dictionary lists "chief" as a noun, but it lists "roof" as a noun, plural "roofs". This suggests that there is some doubt. Why would it bother listing the plural if it just follows the rule of adding s?

Irregular words come and go. Words which are regular can become irregular, like dived becoming dove in America, as more people start using them and they sound good. Irregular words like bore and wrought die out when people stop using them and eventually no-one can remember that there was an irregular form. I don't know whether there was ever a word "rooves", but if TC and Mycroft use it often enough it will (once again?) become part of the language.

Hi all

I just find the 'dive becoming dove' example intriguing. Perhaps it is relevant that 'dived' *is* actually relatively awkward to pronounce (well, I did say *relatively*!) compared to 'dove'

'Wrought' is another interesting one. I had always associated it with 'wreak', as in 'havoc'. I had kind of thought that a sentence like, "It wrought havoc with my arthritis." would be the past tense of 'wreak'. Interesting to know that the two verbs (forms) are not related. Thanks

Spiff

(G)roovy

Kelli, as if to underline what Gnomon so wisely said, the film of which you speak is firmly 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Both 'dwarfs' and 'dwarves' are usually considered acceptable plurals. However, I have to disagree with G in one respect: you can have seven elves, but not 'elfs'.


Sorry, TC, but you still can't have 'rooves'. As we haven't heard from Mycroft, I can only assume he is frantically looking thru his substantial archives to find some support for 'rooves'. Keep on searchin'...

Now, as a slight diversion, let me reproduce a short conversation I had this morning with the lady in the shop:

Me: "How are you this morning?"

Nice lady: "Sucking diesel!"

She was smiling when she said it, but is it safe for me to return?

Recalling the glorious days of post-war rationing, perhaps, when heros siphoned fuel from their fellow's vehicles?