Plural Of Hoof And Roof

It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam.

Plural of hoof and roof.

Poof and poofs follow the same rule. 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. The plural of roof the plural of roof is roofs. I say roof like food and hoof lik.

In any given region the pronunciation of roof doesn t necessarily follow with the pronunciation of hoof. The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below. English pluralization can be complicated. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one.

But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. Thus the plural of goof is goofs not gooves. And this is how you get hoofs. And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars.

Maybe my teachers were wrong. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves.

Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot.

Hoof comes from the old english word hof. 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. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof.

When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. My dialect is primarily midlands. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form.