Plural Of Roof And Hoof

Dwarf dwarves elf elves hoof hooves roof rooves.

Plural of roof and hoof.

It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. Poof and poofs follow the same rule. 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.

Hoof comes from the old english word hof. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. The plural form of hoof is hoofs or hooves. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.

The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. English pluralization can be complicated.

And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. But then at some point in the 80 s after i had moved to the west coast people were looking at me funny when i did that and my writing was corrected to roofs rooves still sounds right but now it looks weird. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. 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.

Maybe my teachers were wrong. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form. When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. 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.

Should it become rooves like hooves. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural.