Crudite(s) is an issue that's come up before, tiggerbelle, and perhaps never quite been resolved. The issue is not related to its French origin, but is everything to do with plurals.
Originally only the plural was allowed - resulting not from any consideration by me, but just the way things were in the word list we started with. Biggerbirdbrain asked why
crudite was rejected, and I concluded it should be allowed, and said I would drop
crudites and insert
crudite. The thread is
here.
I added the singular, but forgot about my intention of removing the plural. I noticed the oversight in
this post, when considering a similar issue regarding
glute(s). At that time, I suggested that perhaps both
crudite and
crudites should continue to be allowed, as the former is rare and the latter common, and it seems odd to drop a common word in favour of a rarer form. I invited comments, and a couple were submitted along the lines of, "My! that is complicated. You'd better decide, Alan." In the end, I added
glute, and allowed
glutes to remain as well (and made it common), and left both
crudite and
crudites in the list.
I'm still not sure which is the best way to go on such cases.
Thanks for reminding me about
ranga, tiggerbelle. I've been falling behind on responding to word queries, but I will get to it eventually.
