-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Chris Rouch wrote: > On 2/16/07, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Anne Wilson wrote: >> > On Friday 16 February 2007, Mike McCarty wrote: >> > >> >>I think that this is not quite true. "Sheep" and "fish" both have >> >>another plural "sheeps" and "fishes", but I do not believe that >> >>"mails" is a word, except as a verb. >> >> >> > >> > 'Fishes', yes, 'sheeps', no. >> >> I stand corrected. I could not find "sheeps" in a largish >> dictionary. I have heard it used, however, by farmers >> in South Texas, and in that sense. This could be a case >> of the dictionary writers just not knowing. >> > > I don't know if it's in any dictionary, but it's common parlance to > say "I got two mails from...". Unrelated, in certain circles the > plural of "text" (aka an SMS text message) is "textses". > > Chris > Well it may be "common usage" in certain circles (like the circle of people ignorant of grammar for instance) but I feel no overwhelming urge to ever say 'textses' (just sounds bad to my ears). A similar common error (and maybe related) is that few people use the possessive form for words ending in 's' (i.e. Steve Jobs' vs Steve Jobs's) for whatever reason the second grates on me a little. FWIW I'd bet that 'sheeps' is in fact improper and unlikely to gain widespread use (how often do you refer to sheep anyway?) Scott -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFF2cdb5mBKdb7VQEcRAtZEAJ9d+BMbrJCXULqOaXl0OdIsgbRQIQCfXlbP zfV9bFqdz+yd4+xXhZN/uZI= =GuUa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
