I think we lost a couple of posts from this thread when the system was upgraded on 1 Feb. I remember reading one (from birdy, perhaps?) questioning some of the words in my list. I couldn't remember what any of those words were until I saw this in the newspaper yesterday:
BOXERS made from bamboo, trunks infused with vitamin C, Y-fronts that boost your bulge and briefs that lift your bottom - these are just some of the new undergarments fuelling a boom in the Australian men's underwear market, now worth $600 million a year.
"Wonderbum: part of undie revolution or a Y-affront?", The Sunday Age, 10 February 2008
One of the words queried was
trunks. I listed it because of its use to mean "men's shorts, worn especially for swimming or boxing", in which sense, it has no corresponding singular form. But anyone seeing the word in a Chihuahua solution might well think instead of luggage, elephants or (if they're American) compartments in cars, and wonder why the word was accepted.
Some of the words I listed relate to even more unusual usages. One of these words is ...
words. I listed it because of the usage as in "we had words", where
words means angry talk. On reflection, I don't think
words should be allowed - unless we were to decide on allowing all plurals. Not only is it a fairly unusual idiom, but it's closely related to
words as the plural of
word - in fact, it takes a little thought to convince yourself that, in the angry talk sense, there is no singular ("we had a word" means something quite different).
Other examples involving unusual usages are
bats (crazy),
bones (a percussion instrument),
falls (a waterfall) and
links (a golf course).
I think
blues,
news and
odds are at the other end of the spectrum. It's hard to think of examples where these words are used as plurals that have singular forms. In fact, I doubt that you can for
news and
odds.
On this scale, I think
craps is more like
blues than
words. That is, it has a strong case for inclusion. But I think it has to be recognised that there
is a scale, and there will be borderline cases. I don't believe it's possible to formulate a hard and fast rule.
There's been a virtual moratorium on admitting plural-like words since our earlier discussion of the issue, where strong words were spoken on both sides of the debate. So, even some words that obviously should be allowed, like
theses, haven't been admitted.
I'm happy to go back to considering plural-like words on their individual merits, but I'd be happier if I felt there was a broad acceptance of the criteria we should be applying.
So, what do people think about
trunks?
