Plural Of Hoof And Roof

The noun roof adheres to the standard rules for forming the plurals of nouns in english shown in the table below.

Plural of hoof and roof.

On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. I say roof like food and hoof lik.

This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. Roofs constructed of flat sloped sections are referred to as pitched roofs. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form.

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. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. And this is how you get hoofs.

English pluralization can be complicated. The plural of roof the plural of roof is roofs. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. And the plural forms roofs and hooves don t necessarily follow the singulars.

When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. My dialect is primarily midlands. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. 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.

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. Thus the plural of goof is goofs not gooves. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

Hoof comes from the old english word hof. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. The primary job of most roofs is to keep out water.