I'd be a happy man if just one person would agree with me that it's a complicated question, with no simple, formulaic solutions.
Threeb says:
Why should the fact that adding an "s" legitimately and completely changes the meaning of a word keep it from being added?
And T says:
If the word has a completely different meaning by adding an 's', it is, surely, a completely different word so should be allowed in on it's own merits!!
But taking these pronouncements as absolute rules would seem to mean we should also allow
words (meaning angry talk),
bats (crazy),
bones (a percussion instrument),
falls (a waterfall) and
links (a golf course). And here are some others:
- taps (a military signal)
- talks (a meeting)
- stripes (an indication of military rank)
- strings (a section of an orchestra)
- hearts (a card game)
- elements (the weather)
- effects (possessions)
- crackers (crazy)
- buns (buttocks)
- bowls (a game)
- tails (a type of coat)
- scrubs (a surgical gown)
- guts (courage)
- duds (clothes)
But every one of these has the potential to cause bewilderment among players. Especially among the ninety percent of players who never look at the forum. (I just made this statistic up, but I imagine the percentage is something like that.) But I'm sure that if all those words, plus a number of others like them, were admitted to the word list, it wouldn't be just non-forumites who were confused. Before long people would be posting to the forum along the lines of "Why can't I have
cups when
bowls was allowed the other day?"
So what is the solution? In my view, we need to take account of how commonly used various senses of a word are. When someone sees the word
blues, they most likely think of the music or the mood, neither of which has a singular form. However, when someone sees the word
tails, they probably think of animals' appendages, which have the singular
tail, rather than Fred Astaire's coat, which doesn't.
Going by this criterion,
craps should probably be allowed, not just because it's a different word from the word meaning "defecates", but also because the gambling game is so well-known that most people would quickly think of it as at least one of the possible meanings of the word. But I'm not so sure about
trunks, for instance.
