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plural
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
plural
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
singular/plural (=showing whether the subject is one thing or person or more)
▪ The third person singular is 'lies'.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
irregular verb/plural etc
▪ Index of language points and of irregular verbs.
▪ The conjugations of these irregular verbs.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But their swagger is expressed in the first-person plural, and their luster is vulnerable, always demanding fresh polish.
▪ For example under the headword child is the information that the plural is children rather than childs.
▪ In the twentieth century, in fact, the plural of the word predominates, and is closest to our personal experience.
▪ Professor I.. Cantor, although he used the first person plural in his talk, did not thank any collaborators.
▪ The plural is important here for there can be no single or homogeneous strategy against racism because racism itself is never homogeneous.
▪ The term transnational capitalist class is used interchangeably in the singular and the plural.
II.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
form
▪ These languages have a dual form in addition to singular and plural forms.
reference
▪ Rather, it is an examination of constraints which militate for or against plural reference.
▪ It is generally assumed that the use of and will enhance plural reference in this example.
▪ One possibility relates to the many cases where plural reference is made under conditions which our results show to be relatively unfavourable.
▪ If they do not map in this way, then plural reference with the atomic individuals is not possible.
▪ However, it is recognized that other tasks may well tap other aspects of plural reference.
▪ First consider the overall incidence of plural references.
▪ The complex ref-O is that which enables plural reference to take place.
▪ Our questions are thus more concerned with preferences than with boundary conditions in which plural references may become impossible.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ "Have" is the plural form of "has."
▪ a plural pronoun
▪ the plural makeup of the United States
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I think that the 80s were beneficial in that they produced plural arts funding.
▪ If they do not map in this way, then plural reference with the atomic individuals is not possible.
▪ Rather, it is an examination of constraints which militate for or against plural reference.
▪ The council will be set up at the start of March and will be plural and representative, he said.
▪ The letter $ is introduced in the second volume as a plural suffix to graphic symbols.
▪ The words hawa and its plural alma occur some thirty times in the Koran as the negative pole of the ideal city.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plural

Plural \Plu"ral\, a. [L. pluralis, from plus, pluris, more; cf. F. pluriel, OF. plurel. See Plus.] Relating to, or containing, more than one; designating two or more; as, a plural word.

Plural faith, which is too much by one.
--Shak.

Plural number (Gram.), the number which designates more than one. See Number, n., 8.

Plural

Plural \Plu"ral\, n. (Gram.) The plural number; that form of a word which expresses or denotes more than one; a word in the plural form.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
plural

late 14c., from Old French plurel "more than one" (12c., Modern French pluriel), from Latin pluralis "of or belonging to more than one," from plus (genitive pluris) "more" (see plus). The noun meaning "a plural number" is from late 14c.

Wiktionary
plural

a. 1 Consisting of or containing more than one of something. 2 (context comparable English) pluralistic. n. (context grammar English): a word in the form in which it potentially refers to something other than one person or thing; and other than two things if the language has a ''dual'' form.

WordNet
plural

n. the form of a word that is used to denote more than one [syn: plural form] [ant: singular]

plural

adj. grammatical number category referring to two or more items or units [ant: singular]

Wikipedia
Plural

The plural, in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. Plural of nouns typically denote a quantity other than the default quantity represented by a noun, which is generally one (the form that represents this default quantity is said to be of singular number). Most commonly, therefore, plurals are used to denote two or more of something, although they may also denote more than fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English word cats, which corresponds to the singular cat.

Words of other types, such as verbs, adjectives and pronouns, also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement with the number of their associated nouns.

Some languages also have a dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. However, in English and many other languages, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers, except for possible remnants of the dual in pronouns such as both and either.

Usage examples of "plural".

Our second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind.

In most other countries the propertyless were disqualified or plural votes were given to taxpayers, university graduates and fathers of families.

LotR-style form of Quenya may opt for the forms with double plural marking.

A feature of nouns, pronouns, and a few verbs, referring to singular or plural.

We have a few examples of this plural in our scarce source material, but they are not very helpful.

I will not construct any exercises involving the plural form of the possessive and instrumental cases.

No comment on how high it went, but judges, plural, were sure to be indicted.

Tolkien changed the rules for how the plural form of adjectives is constructed.

It could be that in both instances, the case ending is not added to the adjective because the adjectival plural inflection and the case inflection would somehow collide.

In early sources, adjectives in -a form their plural form by adding the ending -r, just like nouns in -a do.

This way of forming plural adjectives was still valid as late as 1937 or slightly earlier.

In this poem, adjectives in -a form their plurals by means of the ending -i.

Later, Tolkien however introduced one more complication: Adjectives in -a had plurals in -ai in archaic Quenya only.

As for adjectives in -ë, they seem to behave like most nouns of the same shape: -ë becomes -i in the plural.

Evidently the plural form was especially mentioned primarily to illustrate another point: that adjectives in -itë have plural forms in -isi, the consonant t turning into s before i.