Plural Of Hoof And Roof

When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves.

Plural of hoof and roof.

And this is how you get hoofs. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.

My dialect is primarily midlands. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water.

The plural of roof the plural of roof is roofs. 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. Poof and poofs follow the same rule. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed.

In any given region the pronunciation of roof doesn t necessarily follow with the pronunciation of hoof. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. Hoof comes from the old english word hof. Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs.

English pluralization can be complicated. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form. I say roof like food and hoof lik. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

Should it become rooves like hooves. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. For example roof chef and others these do not apply the previous rule but simply add the s normally at the end of the word after f in order to obtain the plural form. 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.

Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below. And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars.