mutated plurals
Definition: Words whose internal vowels change to form their plural.
Example: English has seven such pairs: man/men, louse/lice, tooth/teeth, mouse/mice, goose/geese, foot/feet, and woman/women.
Oxford English Dictionary: The first OED citation of the concept (there is no entry for the exact phrase) is from 1875–6: "It is extremely probable that all subjunctives originally had mutated vowels."
(H. Sweet in Trans. Philol. Soc. 549)


Please comment

E-Mail: