Spoons Are Weird
Posted on 02 January 2010
Today I remembered an old conversation I had years ago which involved looking for common but weird words. Some of these words weren’t weird until you thought about it. Like ‘spoon’. Then while remembering this, my brain turned it into a bizarre English lesson. Keep in mind all of this came to mind while driving home from work, and for some reason I was overwhelmed by the compulsion to document it for posterity.
Observe and despair at my brain in action.
Spoons is a weird word. This sentence is wrong because you can’t refer to a plural noun in the singular, and so it could technically read “Spoons are a weird word” but of course that doesn’t make sense either because we are not talking about a plural noun, but rather the word referencing the object – ‘spoon’. The exception to this rule is when abstracting a plural into a singular collective noun, such as “group” or “bunch”. However in this case you could not say “Spoons are a weird bunch” and get the same meaning as was intended in the sentence starting the paragraph.
Of course you might also say “Spoon is a weird word”, which removes the confusion resulting from the plural noun, but even this is incorrect because neglecting to quote a word makes it the refer to the object instead of the word itself. I found the plural form of the word ‘spoon’ especially highlighted the issue when read or spoken aloud. So to say “Spoon is a weird word” would also be incorrect because it would be stating that a spoon is a word, which it is not – it is rather a utensil used to assist in the act of eating.
The only valid form I can imagine is “’Spoons’ is a weird word”. Notice the single quotes around ‘spoons’ which excludes it from the rules associated with proper noun use, and abstracts the “spoons” into a singular quoted subject.
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