Kirk Mahoney . com

I wrote yesterday about the nouns “swine” and “pig”.

Thinking about other animals, this has made me ask even more questions: 1. What exactly does “cattle” mean? 2. How is “cattle” related to “cow”? 3. Is it preferable to refer to bovines as “cattle” or “cows”?

Dictionary.com says that the plural noun “cattle” primarily means bovine animals, esp. domesticated members of the genus Bos.

And Dictionary.com says that the first three meanings of the noun “cow” are (a) the mature female of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos, (b) the female of various other large animals, as the elephant or whale, and (c) Informal. a domestic bovine of either sex and any age.

So it is preferable to use “cattle” to refer to bovines in general and to use “cows” to refer specifically to mature female bovines or to refer to the females (usually mature) of other large animals (usually mammals).

I heard this last week on a conference call.

Problem:
The speaker pluralized the wrong word.

Explanation:
Someone made a comment during a conference call.

The call’s facilitator responded to the comment by saying (quote) “I have two train of thoughts on that.” (unquote).

Given that “two” modifies “train” and not “thought”, the word “train” — not the word “thought” — should have been pluralized.

This type of mistake is a common English blunder in spoken American English because avoiding it requires one to think quickly beyond the common pattern of putting the pluralizing S or E-S at the very end of a concept, which in this case is (quote) “train of thought” (unquote).

Another example of this type of mistake is pluralizing (quote) “attorney general” (unquote) by saying the incorrect phrase (quote) “attorney generals” (unquote) instead of the correct phrase (quote) “attorneys general” (unquote).

Solution:
“I have two trains of thought on that.”

I got an interesting email message last Monday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to her simply as “Paula” because I don’t have permission to use her surname.

Paula had read “Alumnus” vs. “Alumna” vs. “Alumni” vs. “Alumnae”.

She also had seen a link named “Miss ND Alumni” at the top of the Miss North Dakota website.

Paula told me (quote) “I had just dashed off a note to the webmaster of the Miss North Dakota pageant where the menu item is Miss ND Alumni, and I listed the masculine and feminine singular and plural forms of Alumnus.” (unquote).

She thanked me for (quote) “defending correct English usage” (unquote).

Thank you, Paula, for defending correct English usage, too!

And, in case my statement in the earlier post was unclear, let me stress here that it is correct to use the masculine plural form when referring to a group of males and females.

In contrast, because the Miss North Dakota contest is only for women, “Miss ND Alumnae” — not “Miss ND Alumni” — is the correct name for the link on the Miss North Dakota website.

I saw this in a corporate announcement.

Problem:
The noun should be singular, not plural.

Explanation:
The full sentence was (quote) “If we all row in the same directions, we will ultimately climb the mountains and be successful.” (unquote).

Beyond this sentence’s mixed metaphor (more on that in tomorrow’s post), there is a problem with the “If” clause.

First, we must agree that anyone can row in only one direction at any given time.

Now, suppose that you are rowing in a direction and that I am rowing in a direction.

Suppose further that these two directions are identical.

Then there is one and only one direction in which the two of us are rowing.

We would call this (quote) “the same direction” (unquote).

By the way, it is incorrect to say that the adjective “same” always modifies a singular noun.

An example of the adjective “same” correctly modifying a plural noun appears in (quote) “Jack and Jill like the same fruits.” (unquote).

Solution:
“If we all row in the same direction, …”

I hear and see a lot of pluralization of company names.

Here are some examples.

Many people pluralize J.D. Power and Associates as “J.D. Powers” — as in (quote) “They won the J.D. Powers award three times.” (unquote).

Many people pluralize Barnes & Noble as “Barnes & Nobles” — as in (quote) “Did you see that book at Barnes & Nobles?” (unquote).

Many people pluralize Kroger as “Krogers” — as in (quote) “I am going to Krogers. Do you need anything?” (unquote).

And what sounds sometimes like a possessive-apostrophe-”s” is often written simply with an “s”, so I know that not everyone is trying to make the name into a possessive.

When I saw this morning that today was March 15, I thought of the statement (quote) “Beware the ides of March.” (unquote).

This statement, which refers to the 15th of March, is from a soothsayer in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

But I still wondered about the origin of the plural noun “ides”, so I looked up the word at dictionary.com.

And I learned a few things.

• The word “ides” is from the ancient Roman calendar and dates back to approximately 1330.
• The word “ides” refers not only to the 15th of March but also to the 15th of May, July, and October.
• The word “ides” refers to the 13th of every other month in the ancient Roman calendar.
• Eight days in each month collectively are known as the ides, but only the final one (e.g., the 15th of March) gets to be called specifically the “ides” of that month. The day before a month’s “ides” day is called (quote) “the day before the ides” (unquote), two days before a month’s “ides” day can be called (quote) “two days before the ides” (unquote), and so on.

Snooping around the Web some more, I learned that astrologists also care about the ides.

So now I am wondering whether we should be careful about May 15, July 15, and October 15, too.

That is what I get for being inquisitive!

I saw this yesterday on Fox News Channel.

Problem:
The apostrophe does not belong.

Explanation:
The news-related discussion on Fox News Channel (FNC) was about Caroline Kennedy’s public-relations campaign to get selected by New York’s governor to be the replacement for Senator Hillary Clinton, who had been nominated by President-Elect Barack Obama to be his Secretary of State.

FNC displayed a banner at the bottom of the TV screen during the discussion.

The banner asked (quote) “DO KENNEDY’S HAVE TO WORK TWICE AS HARD?” (unquote) because the discussion focused on whether a member of the Kennedy family has to work harder to prove himself or herself to the public so as to avoid the appearance of a sense of entitlement from the legacy of President John F. Kennedy.

Pluralizing a proper noun that ends in “y” requires simply that an “s” be added to the end.

In other words, a name such as “Kennedy” should not be changed to “Kennedies” — with an I-E-S –and should not be changed to “Kennedy’s” — with an APOSTROPHE-S — when pluralizing it.

I suspect that a spelling checker encouraged the TV banner writer to make the mistake of pluralizing “Kennedy” by adding an apostrophe followed by an “s” because a spelling checker will recognize this form as correct. Unfortunately, this form is correct for the possessive, singular form of “Kennedy” and not for the plural form of “Kennedy”.

Solution:
“Do Kennedys have to work …”

I thought about these nouns after seeing what I considered to be a misuse of one of them the other day.

Problem:
Many people are confused about which noun to use for which group of people.

Explanation:
My wife received in the mail two days ago a publication by her undergraduate and graduate-school alma mater.

The publication had a page devoted to one of its graduates.

The graduate was a woman, and the title on the page was “Alumni Profile” followed by her name.

I consider “Alumni” in the title to be inappropriate. I would have used “Alumna” instead. Here is the explanation.

The noun “alumnus” means a male graduate or former student of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumna” means a female graduate or former student of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumni” means male graduates or former students of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumnae” means female graduates or former students of a particular university, college, or school.

Many colleges and universities use “alumni” to refer to males and females. This is analogous to the use of the masculine plural form in Spanish when referring to a group of only males or to a group of males and females.

Historically female colleges and universities that now accept males take a different tack: they use “alumnae and alumni” or “alumnae/i” to refer to their collective group of female and male graduates.

Solution:
Use “alumna” for a woman. Use “alumnae” for a group of women. Use “alumnus” for a man. Use “alumni” for a group of men or for a group of men and women. Never call an individual “an alumni” of a school, college, or university.

I thought of these two words after learning recently that the singular form of one of them relates to Fannie Mae.

Problem:
One of these is not a proper word.

Explanation:
Fannie Mae — the U.S. Federal National Mortgage Association — has been in the news a lot recently, given the recent failures in the U.S. mortgage and banking industries.

I learned the other day that a (quote) “dwarf” (unquote) in Fannie Mae lingo is the name given to a pool of mortgage-backed, Fannie Mae-issued securities with a maturity of 15 years.

As I wrote earlier this year, the plural form of the singular noun “roof” is “roofs” and never “rooves”.

In contrast, the plural form of the singular noun “dwarf” is either “dwarfs” — spelled D-W-A-R-F-S — or “dwarves” — spelled D-W-A-R-V-E-S.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
“Dwarves” is a proper word (a plural form of the singular noun “dwarf”). “Rooves”, in contrast, is not a proper word.

I saw this at Freetricity.com.

Problem:
An apostrophe appears where it should not.

Explanation:
(Quote) “The reason’s why are threefold:” (unquote) — with an apostrophe between the noun “reason” and the letter “s” — appeared on a Freetricity.com Web page about the E2D Windmaster and the three reasons that less than 3% of U.S. homes have a renewable energy-source product.

An apostrophe has very limited use in the formation of a plural noun. Here are the situations:

1. to form plurals of lower-case letters;
2. to form groups of years;
3. to form plurals of numbers;
4. to form plurals of symbols;
5. to form plurals of some short words.

However, most authorities recommend omission of the apostrophe for situations 2 through 4, given that there is no possibility of misreading when the apostrophe is omitted.

Given that the noun “reason” does not match any of these five situations, we have the solution.

Solution:
“The reasons why are threefold:”