Doesn’t it seem like every time you learn a grammar rule, you have to learn its exceptions? Take plurals, for example. You can add an -s or -es to most words to create a plural … except for when you can’t. Then there are plurals that look nothing like the original noun, and some that have created their own rules. Plurals can be so odd, we just had to dedicate a slideshow to them! Let’s start with spaghetti.
Yes, spaghetti. Next time you dive into a hot plate of spaghetti, take a moment to appreciate each individual spaghetto. The word spaghetti is from the Italian spago meaning “thin rope, twine.” It’s amazing to think that this beloved, stringy pasta has been a plural all along. Early on in its time in English, spaghetti was spelled “sparghetti,” as in Eliza Acton’s pivotal 1845 cookbook Modern Cookery, but by 1885 the plural pasta assumed its currently accepted form.