Author Topic: Hippies  (Read 376 times)

jancsika

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Hippies
« on: July 27, 2020, 07:09:07 AM »
Not accepted, presumably because it's the plural of "hippie". However it is also the plural of "hippy" (which dictionaries list as a variant of "hippie" and which as an ageing hippy myself I am more familiar with!).

I accept that "hippie" might be more common, but I'd be curious to know if there is any rule governing cases where a word (such as hippies) is the plural of two different singular words (hippy, hippies) ?

Alan W

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Re: Hippies
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2020, 01:39:30 PM »
It does depend on the relative commonness of the two spellings, as you obviously suspect, jancsika.

For example, I accepted a request to allow caddies, as it appeared that a golf caddy was much more frequently written as caddy than caddie. Moreover, a container for tea, etc, is always written as caddy.

On the other hand, when cabbies was raised, I found that the singular word was more often written as cabbie than cabby. I concluded that, "I think if I were to allow cabbies, it would create more discontent than it would remove."

More recently I've been thinking that any change I make affecting a plural word is likely to make things more confusing, so I've been deferring consideration of all such issues.
Alan Walker
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