Plural Of Hoof And Roof

And this is how you get hoofs.

Plural of hoof and roof.

The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below. My dialect is primarily midlands. Should it become rooves like hooves. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form.

On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. 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.

Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. Thus the plural of goof is goofs not gooves. English pluralization can be complicated. The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water.

And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this 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.

Maybe my teachers were wrong. In any given region the pronunciation of roof doesn t necessarily follow with the pronunciation of hoof. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.

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. 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. I say roof like food and hoof lik.

Hoof comes from the old english word hof. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one.