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The word "mathematics" may have originally been plural in concept, referring to mathematic endeavors, but metonymic shift (the shift in concept from "the endeavors" to "the whole set of endeavors") produced the usage of "mathematics" as a singular entity taking singular verb forms. (A true mass-noun sense of "mathematics" followed naturally.)
Some words borrowed from Inuktitut and related languages spoken by the Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, retain the original plurals. The word Inuit itself is the plural form. Canadian English also borrows Inuktitut singular Inuk, [20] which is uncommon in English outside Canada.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baggage comes from the Old French bagage (from baguer 'tie up') or from bagues 'bundles'. It may also be related to the word bag. [3] Also according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word luggage originally meant inconveniently heavy baggage and comes from the verb lug and the suffix -age ...
English nouns form the largest category of words in English, both in the number of different words and how often they are used in typical texts. The three main categories of English nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. A defining feature of English nouns is their ability to inflect for number, as through the plural –s morpheme.
In many languages, words other than nouns may take plural forms, these being used by way of grammatical agreement with plural nouns (or noun phrases). Such a word may in fact have a number of plural forms, to allow for simultaneous agreement within other categories such as case, person and gender, as well as marking of categories belonging to ...
In British English (BrE), collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree.
a moving luggage/baggage display unit, most often at airports a rotating fairground ride (UK: merry-go-round, roundabout) carriage (n.) railway coach (q.v.) designed for the conveyance of passengers the conveying of goods or the price paid for it ("carriage-paid"); "handling" 4-wheeled horse-drawn private passenger vehicle
The word "luggage", derived from the verb "lug", was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1596 to mean "denoting inconveniently heavy baggage". [3] Luggage prior to the invention of the suitcase was mostly wood and leather trunks with an iron base, which were waterproofed using canvas or tree sap.