1. If the plural of goose is geese, why isnt the plural of mongoose just mongeese? And why dont refer to a group of moose as meese?
2. And if youre talking about more than one focus then youre going to want to use the word foci.
3. If your dog has lice but you kill them all except one, then whats left is a louse.
4. Theres the singular radius of a circle, but if theres more than one, its radii. How do you even pronounce this one? Like ray-dee-eye?
5. Same thing with genius – shove more than one genius in a room and you’re left with some genii.
6. For some reason the plural of genus (like in biology) is genera. Sounds pretty cool at least.
7. Apparently the word graffiti is sometimes used in the singular as graffito.
8. Working on a bunch of mathematical formulas? False. Youre working on formulae, the real plural of formula.
9. If a professor gives you more than one syllabus, then what youve got is a stack of syllabi.
10. For some reason Ive never wondered why we say men and women instead of mans and womans. After all, the singular is man and woman.
11. Then there are words that have no singular form at all: pliers, scissors, shorts, trousers, tweezers. A pile of shorts is the same as one pair of shorts.
12. There are also words you really just want to add an S to, but theyd be wrong. Its not aircrafts or hovercrafts, the plural is still just aircraft and hovercraft. As in, Wow, look at all those different aircraft. Sounds so wrong.
13. There are also subtle changes that can get confusing: Synopses is the plural of the incredibly similar synopsis. Just like testes and testis.
14. One that people often argue about is octopus. “Although it is often supposed that octopi is the correct plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but rather a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its correct plural would logically be octopodes.” – Source
15. The plural of buffalo is buffalo. Nothing too shocking, right? It’s the same with other pluralizations like fish or deer. But what makes the word “buffalo” particularly interesting is how many different ways you can use it. In fact, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” is apparently a grammatically correct sentence in the English language. In normal English, the sentence means: Bison from Buffalo, which bison from Buffalo bully, themselves bully bison from Buffalo. So deep.