Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/256

 ttee are in consultation."--"The jury were unable to agree."--"The meeting have shown their discretion."--"The society have settled their'' dispute."--"The flock are widely scattered."--"The whole ''herd were drowned in the sea." The propriety of the last example seems questionable; because whole implies unity, and were drowned is plural. Where a purer concord can be effected, it may be well to avoid such a construction, though examples like it are not uncommon: as, "Clodius was acquitted by a corrupt jury, that had palpably taken shares of money before they gave their verdict."--Bacon. "And the whole multitude of the people were praying without, at the time of incense."--Luke'', i, 10.

OBS. 26.--Nouns have, in some instances, a unity or plurality of meaning, which seems to be directly at variance with their form. Thus, cattle, for beasts of pasture, and pulse, for peas and beans, though in appearance singulars only, are generally, if not always, plural; and ''summons, gallows, chintz, series, superficies, molasses, suds, hunks, jakes, trapes, and corps'', with the appearance of plurals, are generally, if not always, singular. Dr. Webster says that cattle is of both numbers; but wherein the oneness of cattle can consist, I know not. The Bible says, "God made--cattle after their kind."--Gen., i, 25. Here kind is indeed singular, as if cattle were a natural genus of which one must be a cattle; as sheep are a natural genus of which one is a sheep: but whether properly expressed so or not, is questionable; perhaps it ought to be, "and cattle after their kinds." Dr. Gillies says, in his History of Greece, "cattle was regarded as the most convenient measure of value." This seems to me to be more inaccurate and unintelligible, than to say, "Sheep was regarded as the most convenient measure of value." And what would this mean? Sheep is not singular, unless limited to that number by some definitive word; and cattle I conceive to be incapable of any such limitation.

OBS. 27.--Of the last class of words above cited, some may assume an additional es, when taken plurally; as, summonses, gallowses, chintses: the rest either want the plural, or have it seldom and without change of form. Corps, a body of troops, is a French word, which, when singular, is pronounced c=ore, and when plural, c=ores. But corpse, a dead body, is an English word, pronounced k~orps, and making the plural in two syllables, corpses. Summonses is given in Cobb's Dictionary as the plural of summons; but some authors have used the latter with a plural verb: as, "But Love's first summons seldom are obey'd."--Waller's Poems, p. 8. Dr. Johnson says this noun is from the verb to summon; and, if this is its origin, the singular ought to be a summon, and then summons would be a regular plural. But this "singular noun with a plural termination," as Webster describes it, more probably originated from the Latin verb submoneas, used in the writ, and came to us through the jargon of law, in which we sometimes hear men talk of "summonsing witnesses." The authorities for it, however, are good enough; as, "This present summons."--SHAK.: ''Joh. Dict. "This summons he resolved to disobey."--FELL: ib. Chints is called by Cobb a "substantive plural''" and defined as "cotton cloths, made in India;" but other lexicographers define it as singular, and Worcester (perhaps more properly) writes it chintz. Johnson cites Pope as speaking of "a charming chints," and I have somewhere seen the plural formed by adding es. "Of the Construction of single Words, or Serieses of Words."--Ward's Gram., p. 114. Walker, in his Elements of Elocution, makes frequent use of the word "serieses," and of the phrase "series of serieses." But most writers, I suppose, would doubt the propriety of this practice; because, in Latin, all nouns of the fifth declension, such as ''caries, congeries, series, species, superficies'', make their nominative and vocative cases alike in both numbers. This, however, is no rule for writing English. Dr. Blair has used the word species in a plural sense; though I think he ought rather to have preferred the regular English word kinds: "The higher species of poetry seldom admit it."--Rhet., p. 403. Specie, meaning hard money, though derived or corrupted from species, is not the singular of that word; nor has it any occasion for a plural form, because we never speak of a specie. The plural of gallows, according to Dr. Webster, is gallowses; nor is that form without other authority, though some say, gallows is of both numbers and not to be varied: "Gallowses were occasionally put in order by the side of my windows."--Leigh Hunt's Byron, p. 369.

"Who would not guess there might be hopes,   The fear of gallowses and ropes,    Before their eyes, might reconcile    Their animosities a while?"--Hudibras, p. 90.

OBS. 28.--Though the plural number is generally derived from the singular, and of course must as generally imply its existence, we have examples, and those not a few, in which the case is otherwise. Some nouns, because they signify such things as nature or art has made plural or double; some, because they have been formed from other parts of speech by means of the plural ending which belongs to nouns; and some, because they are compounds in which a plural word is principal, and put last, are commonly used in the plural number only, and have, in strict propriety, no singular. Though these three classes of plurals may not be perfectly separable, I shall endeavour to exhibit them in the order of this explanation.

1. Plurals in meaning and form: ''analects, annals,[144] archives, ashes, assets, billiards, bowels, breeches, calends, cates, chops, clothes, compasses, crants, eaves, embers, estovers, forceps, giblets, goggles, greaves, hards or hurds, hemorrhoids, ides, matins, nippers, nones, obsequies, orgies,