Thinking caps on: Is the noun "bellows" singular or plural? Should it be, "My bellows ["is" or "are"] fine and dandy"??? -jeff buckels (albuquerque nm)
Thinking caps on: Is the noun "bellows" singular or plural? Should it be, "My bellows ["is" or "are"] fine and dandy"??? -jeff buckels (albuquerque nm)
Hi Jeff,
I'll leave the formal definition to the linguistics experts, but I vote for:
My bellows ARE fine.
Bellows seems to be one of those confusing nouns, like pants, that end in an "s" and use plural verb forms (my pants ARE blue - not my pants is blue) even though they refer to a single item.
Of course, it gets even more confusing. We do call them a PAIR of pants after all. Why, I don't know - looks like a single article of clothing to me. My shirt has two sleeves, but I don't refer to it as PAIR of shirts. And I use the singular verb when talking about my shirt (my shirt IS blue). Now socks - they make sense. I buy them, wear them and refer to them (my socks ARE blue) two at a time - they truly are a PAIR of socks.
I guess as long as your bellows is/are fine, that's all that really matters no matter how you say it.
Kerry
Is your scissors fine too? I'd vote for "are."
Is lens singular or plural? You can have a twin lens reflex, but can you have a single len reflex? Why do you drive on a parkway and park in a driveway? Things like that just baffle me.
While we're on the subject, how come we say 'he', 'his' and 'him' but not 'she', 'shis' and 'shim'? Cheers, DJ.
I think I may have an answer here. I'm looking at one of the refernce books I have left over from my last journalism class, When Words Collide, A Media Writer's Gude to Grammar and Style, and on page is the following bit of text...
Now then, I personally feel that the word bellows falls into the former category, and therefore would call for the use of singular verb forms and pronouns. This especially makes sense if you consider the term set of bellows, which is generally interchangable with bellows and which would also necessitate singular verb forms and pronouns.Collective Nouns Their singular fomrs denote a group of people or things- for example, jury, herd, athletics and politics. They can be troublesome for subject-verb agreement. If the noun is considered as a whole, the verb and associated pronouns are singular: The jury has returned its verdict. If that unit is broken up or considered individually, the plural verb is required: The herd of cattle have scattered because of the dust storm.
Those are my thoughts on the matter, anyway...
Hmmm.....looking at the title I do believe I misspelled a word. I'm not quite sure what a "gude" is....
Him bellers am fine, also else ils dandy.
It is my understanding that "bellows" is plural. A "bellow" is a flexible connector with a pair of folds. If you have more than a pair, then you have plural pairs - therefore many "bellows".
I vote for "bellows ARE..."
I finally looked it up in the dictionary. It lists bellows as a noun and can be used singular or plural. That's odd. It gives "bellow" as a seperate listing. Bellows has its own listing. That's all the bellowing I am going to do on this subject, unless someone were to bellow about the condition of my bellows, which is/are o.k. on all but one of my cameras which have bellows.
regards,
Bookmarks