English Plural - Near-regular Plurals

Near-regular Plurals

In Old and Middle English voiceless fricatives /f/, /θ/ mutated to voiced fricatives before a voiced ending. In some words this voicing survives in the modern English plural. In the case of /f/ changing to /v/, the mutation is indicated in the orthography as well; also, a silent e is added in this case if the singular does not already end with -e:

In addition, there is one word where /s/ is voiced in the plural:

Many nouns ending in /f/ or /θ/ (including all words where /f/ is represented orthographically by gh or ph) nevertheless retain the voiceless consonant:

Some can do either:

^ Note 1: The Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team is a special case; see Teams and their members below.

^ Note 2: In a Canadian accent, the mutation to a voiced consonant produces a change in the sound of the preceding diphthong (/aʊ/ or /aɪ/).

^ Note 3: For dwarf, the common form of the plural was dwarfs —as, for example, in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs— until J. R. R. Tolkien popularized dwarves; he intended the changed spelling to differentiate the "dwarf" fantasy race in his novels from the cuter and simpler beings common in fairy tales, but his usage has since spread. Multiple astronomical dwarf stars and multiple nonmythological short human beings, however, remain dwarfs.

^ Note 4: For staff (/stæf/ or /stɑːf/) in the sense of "a body of employees", the plural is always staff; otherwise, both staffs and staves (/steɪvz/) are acceptable, except in compounds, such as flagstaffs. Staves is rare in North America except in the sense of "magic rod", or the musical notation tool; stave of a barrel or cask is a back-formation from staves, which is its plural. (See the Plural to singular by back-formation section below.)