A noun that forms its plural by changing the spelling of the word and does not follow any rules is called what?

A noun that forms its plural by changing the spelling of the word and does not follow any rules is called what?

• A. Irregular noun
• B. Regular noun
• C. Plural noun
• D. Count noun

Answer: (A)

Some English nouns don’t form their plurals by simply adding -s or -es; instead, the word itself changes in ways that don’t follow a single rule. That type of noun is called irregular. The key idea is that the plural isn’t produced by a predictable pattern, so you have to learn the new form for each word or memorize common irregulars. Examples include man → men, woman → women, tooth → teeth, goose → geese, mouse → mice, and even some where the plural changes more drastically like cactus → cacti or phenomenon → phenomena. Regular nouns, by contrast, take the standard -s/-es plural, so they don’t exhibit this kind of spelling change. A plural noun simply means there is more than one of something, which isn’t enough to describe how its plural is formed.

Some English nouns don’t form their plurals by simply adding -s or -es; instead, the word itself changes in ways that don’t follow a single rule. That type of noun is called irregular. The key idea is that the plural isn’t produced by a predictable pattern, so you have to learn the new form for each word or memorize common irregulars. Examples include man → men, woman → women, tooth → teeth, goose → geese, mouse → mice, and even some where the plural changes more drastically like cactus → cacti or phenomenon → phenomena. Regular nouns, by contrast, take the standard -s/-es plural, so they don’t exhibit this kind of spelling change. A plural noun simply means there is more than one of something, which isn’t enough to describe how its plural is formed.