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If the latter meaning is intended, the word (though singular in form) may be treated as if it were a plural, in that it may take a plural verb and be replaced with a plural pronoun: (in British English) the government are considering their position (alternatively the government is considering its position).
Plurals and verb forms almost always follow even though not listed here: "analyses/analyzes", "analysed/analyzed" etc. (but note "analysis" is universal). Some usages identified as American English are common in British English; e.g., disk for disc. A few listed words are more different words than different spellings: "aeroplane/airplane", "mum ...
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.
The Latin word vīrus was a neuter noun of the second declension, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are rare enough that inferring rules is difficult. (One rare attested plural, pelage as a plural of pelagus, is borrowed from Greek, so does not give guidance for virus.)
According to The New Oxford Dictionary of English, such use is also increasingly rare the UK. [34] Unlike BrE, however, AmE typically uses an before herb, since the h in this word is silent for most Americans. The adverb well may be used in colloquial BrE only with the meaning "very" to modify adjectives. For example, "The film was well good."
This guideline does clarify when plurals of the form "word(s)" should be used. An article can use a word's singular or plural form or both forms, hence the need for dual form "word(s)". For example, most video game articles often use the singular form "player" to refer all players, even though the games may be multiplayer, online or offline.
Although there is some dialectal retention of the original plural ye and the original singular thou, most English-speaking groups have lost the original forms. Because of the loss of the original singular-plural distinction, many English dialects belonging to this group have innovated new plural forms of the second person pronoun.
The collective presents similar issues as the distributive in its potential classification as grammatical number, including the fact that some languages allow both collective and plural markers on the same words. Adding a collective to a plural word does not change the number of referents, only how those referents are conceptualized. [315]