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The modern English noun dwarf descends from Old English: dweorg. It has a variety of cognates in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse: dvergr and Old High German: twerg. According to Vladimir Orel, the English noun and its cognates ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic *dwergaz. [1]
English plurals include the plural forms of English nouns and English determiners. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns.
[T 23] According to Tolkien, the "real 'historical' plural" of "dwarf" is "dwarrows" or "dwerrows". [21] He described the word "dwarves" as "a piece of private bad grammar". [ T 24 ] In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien explained that if people still spoke of "dwarves" regularly, English might have retained a special plural for the ...
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006) by Gilliver, Marshall, and Weiner has a section on Tolkien's usage of dwarves (pp. 104-108). This section is pretty clear: ""Before Tolkien, the standard plural of dwarf in modern English had strictly been dwarfs" (p. 104). As examined in this section, Tolkien's usage is ...
A duende, according to the Chamorro-English Dictionary by Donald Topping, Pedro Ogo and Bernadita Dungca, is a goblin, elf, ghost or spook in the form of a dwarf, a mischievous spirit which hides or takes small children. Some believe the Duende to be helpful or shy creatures, while others believe them to be mischievous and eat misbehaving children.
English also tends to use the plural with decimal fractions, even if less than one, as in 0.3 metres, 0.9 children. Common fractions less than one tend to be used with singular expressions: half (of) a loaf , two-thirds of a mile .
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
Ojibwe myths also bring up a creature known as the Memegwaans, or Memegwaanswag (Plural), which seems to be different from the more common Little People variation of Memegwesi. According to Basil H. Johnston , a Memegwaans is a little person without definitive form which is terrified of adult humans.