Plural Of Roof And Hoof

And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one.

Plural of roof and hoof.

English pluralization can be complicated. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof.

Belief grief chief mischief handkerchief hoof roof proof dwarf wharf safe. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. Maybe my teachers were wrong. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof.

The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. Should it become rooves like hooves. 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. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs.

The plural form of hoof is hoofs or 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. Dwarf dwarves elf elves hoof hooves roof rooves. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot.

And this is how you get hoofs. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. Hoof comes from the old english word hof.

But then at some point in the 80 s after i had moved to the west coast people were looking at me funny when i did that and my writing was corrected to roofs rooves still sounds right but now it looks weird. When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun.