What Is the Plural of 'Mouse'?

Today’s topic is irregular plural nouns, odd nouns such as “ox” and “oxen.”

Robbie from Keene, New Hampshire, called in with this question:

One of my friends knows that I'm kind of geeky and into grammar and was asking me about adding the “-s” onto words to make the plural but in the same question came up with the question about words like "moose" and "mice" and "ox" and a "goose"—how all of those aren't formed into the plural by adding the “-s.” And I was wondering if you can give any insight? Is there any rhyme or reason into this? Is it only animals that we don't have to add an “-s” on to make it plural?

Robbie made me laugh when he placed a follow-up call asking me to imagine pluralizing all these words like the word "oxen": "goosen," "micen," and "moosen." Very funny. Perhaps we would say some plurals that way if we were all still speaking Old English. More on that in a minute. 

In modern English, most of the time we make a noun plural by adding an “-s.” So the plural of “animal” is “animals.” Robbie, on the other hand, is asking about irregular plurals, and we’re going to delve into the history of English as we learn about three irregular types of plural nouns. Many irregular plurals in English do seem to be animal names, but odd plurals aren't limited to animals.

Plurals Derived from an Old English Form

The first group of irregular nouns we’ll discuss come from an obsolete form in Old English. “Ox” and “oxen” fall into this category. Old English is a West Germanic language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and southern Scotland between the mid-5th and late-11th centuries (1). “Beowulf” was written in this language.

If someone from a thousand years ago traveled through time to visit us, we wouldn’t be able to understand each other, but as modern English evolved, it retained some elements of Old English. So we can blame Old English for the plural noun “oxen.” Only two other plural nouns in modern English end this way: “children” and “brethren.” Some other nouns, such as “eye,” “house,” and “hose,” used to be pluralized in a similar way, but the plural forms “eyen,” “housen,” and “hosen” are now dialectic or obsolete (2).

Seeing the word “hosen” reminded me of the German word “lederhosen,” which has a similar plural ending as...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips