Plural Of Hoof And Roof

And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one.

Plural of hoof and roof.

And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars. For a good 250 years hoofs was the primary plural form of hoof analogized with the word roof which has roofs as a plural form. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves.

It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. And this is how you get hoofs. I say roof like food and hoof lik. The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water.

The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form. So the best we can say is that the plural form of roof is variable where roofs is the preferred plural in many style manuals although i can see. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof.

Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. The plural of roof the plural of roof is roofs. When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves.

Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. Hoof comes from the old english word hof. My dialect is primarily midlands. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof.

Should it become rooves like hooves. For example roof chef and others these do not apply the previous rule but simply add the s normally at the end of the word after f in order to obtain the plural form. Thus the plural of goof is goofs not gooves. English pluralization can be complicated.