Plural Of Roof And Hoof

English pluralization can be complicated.

Plural of roof and hoof.

When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. 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. And this is how you get hoofs.

Poof and poofs follow the same rule. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun.

Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. Maybe my teachers were wrong. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam.

Should it become rooves like hooves. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs.

The plural form of hoof is hoofs or hooves. Dwarf dwarves elf elves hoof hooves roof rooves. 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. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.

I was taught rooves in grade school on the east coast. Hoof comes from the old english word hof.