2/19/2010

Both Plural and Uncountable

There are plural nouns. There are uncountable nouns. And yes, there are even plural uncountable nouns. You’re probably thinking to yourself, how can a noun be plural and uncountable at the same time? These uncountable nouns are deceptive because they end in -s. Like other uncountable nouns, these words cannot be preceded by a/an or numbers, so you need to use some sort of unit to count them. Here are a few examples:

a set of clothes
a pair of pants / trousers / shorts
a pair of glasses
a type of sports

a system of politics.
a piece of news.
a law of economics / mathematics / physics
an outbreak of measles / mumps

The first group of words, like other plural nouns, use third-person-plural verbs. For instance:
 
My clothes are still hanging on the line.
Those shorts are too long.

The last group of nouns, like other uncountable nouns, use third-person-singular verbs, even though it seems odd. For instance:


Politics runs on money.
No news is good news.

So here you have another bit of information to add to your strange-but-true English file!

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