Plural Of Hoof And Roof

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.

Plural of hoof and roof.

And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. So the best we can say is that the plural form of roof is variable where roofs is the preferred plural in many style manuals although i can see. Thus the plural of goof is goofs not gooves.

In any given region the pronunciation of roof doesn t necessarily follow with the pronunciation of hoof. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. My dialect is primarily midlands. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural.

The plural of roof the plural of roof is roofs. Poof and poofs follow the same rule. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. English pluralization can be complicated.

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. Maybe my teachers were wrong. And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars. I say roof like food and hoof lik.

But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.

The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water. Hoof comes from the old english word hof. And this is how you get hoofs. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof.

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. The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below. When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves.