Plural Of Roof And Hoof

Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural.

Plural of roof and hoof.

But then at some point in the 80 s after i had moved to the west coast people were looking at me funny when i did that and my writing was corrected to roofs rooves still sounds right but now it looks weird. 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. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. I was taught rooves in grade school on the east coast.

Poof and poofs follow the same rule. Should it become rooves like hooves. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed.

When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. 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. Dwarf dwarves elf elves hoof hooves roof rooves.

Hoof comes from the old english word hof. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. The plural form of hoof is hoofs or hooves. When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. 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. English pluralization can be complicated.