Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Syntactic Confectionery Delight
 
PerlMonks  

Re: The plural of "athlete's foot" is...

by BigLug (Chaplain)
on May 07, 2003 at 21:47 UTC ( [id://256389]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to The plural of "athlete's foot" is...

'Athlete's foot' has no plural -- there is only one condition called 'Athlete's Foot' -- thus it is never ever used in a plural sense.

"He has Athlete's Foot"
"They have Athlete's Foot"
"There were 17 cases of Athlete's Foot"

See, 'Athlete's foot' isn't a real noun and isn't a real adjective. It's about halfway between. It's the description of a condition.

"His {situation} was {dire}"
"His {condition} was {Athlete's Foot}"

However the plural form of these is interesting:

"Their {situation} was {dire}"
"Their {condition} was {Athlete's Foot}"

Huh? Now how come we don't pluralise when we're talking about more than one person? Because we're still only talking about one situation and one condition. If they all were in different situations we could have 'Their situations were dire', however there is only one condition that can be described as 'Athlete's foot' and thus the only way we can have more than one condition on the second line is to say 'Their conditions were Athlete's Foot and Measles'..

Now, while we're talking about plurals, how about 'Court Martial'?

It's 'Courts Martial'. See, it's not the martial of which there is more than one, but the court. Martial is the adjective that describes the noun.
  • Comment on Re: The plural of "athlete's foot" is...

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://256389]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others rifling through the Monastery: (5)
As of 2024-04-19 07:30 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found