January 2019

[Twoddle]

Happy New Year to you all!

[Verbivore]

First D'oh! for the year:

Rules slowly changed: Deirdre Elliott served in the WRAAC, the Women's Royal Australian Army Core.

Core – really? I prefer apple corps.

[Little Jack Horner]

It’s now been changed to “corp” ! Is that better ⁉️

[Verbivore]

Jan 2, 2019 0:56:36 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

It’s now been changed to “corp” ! Is that better ⁉️

Ah. Very good!  :-)

Thanks, LJH, for posting that update. 

No, it wasn't I who told Aunty she got it wrong; I've given up.

[Verbivore]

Eight million people, 800 languages: Papua New Guinea

[Verbivore]

Plural of money: is it moneys or monies?

Until fairly recent times, the standard spelling of the plural of money was, in Oz, moneys (following the pattern of monkey / monkeys); however, more and more I'm seeing monies, which I believe to be the US form.

What is the norm in the UK (or anywhere else represented on this board)?

Do those who write monies also spell the plural of monkey monkies?

It remains stubbornly moneys in my newspaper (at least until I retire this September).

[Little Jack Horner]

Money / monies

I think I would be more likely to write monies which according to the Google books n-gram website is more common in both British English and American English (books) and has been so for the past forty years or so. In both versions of English, moneys was more common for the previous hundred years. In the early 19th century, monies was more common in both. The usage graphs are curious but can be accessed here:

books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monies%2Cmoneys&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=5&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmonies%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmoneys%3B%2Cc0

and here:

books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monies%2Cmoneys&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=5&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmonies%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmoneys%3B%2Cc0

At least, I think the links work!

Neither version is used anything like so frequently as in the past. The usage graphs in both British and American English are superficially similar and it might be interesting to research the subject further.

For what it’s worth, I think I have never seen “monkies” although it was apparently sometimes used in the early 18th century. See here:

books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monkeys%2Cmonkies&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=5&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmonkeys%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmonkies%3B%2Cc0

[Verbivore]

Thanks for those links, LJH. (I donned my VPN tinfoil hat to use Google.)

It appears from those n-grams that moneys was dominant up until the mid-'70s, covering the era during which my practices and preferences were set. Apart from common usage, I can see no reason to change now to writing monies, and so shan't.

I shall also continue to pluralise with just an s on the following words:

abbey, alley (would become allies), attorney, bailey, barley, bluey, bogey, chimney, chutney, cockney, comfrey, covey, donkey, doohickey, flunkey, fogey, galley, guernsey, gurney, hackney, hickey, jeepney, jersey, jitney, jockey, joey, journey, kidney, lackey, lamprey, limey, medley, mickey, monkey, odyssey, osprey, paisley, phoney, pulley, spinney, storey (stories are tales, not floors of a structure), trolley, valley, volley (vollies are volunteers).

[Little Jack Horner]

I have ben Googling “moneys vs monies” . There are many websites that refer to this matter but I am not sure about their credentials. Merriam-Webster has this to say:

www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/money-plural-usage-monies

It seems the Oxford Dictionary accepts both spellings with monies in a “financial context”. I am unclear how the plural of money could be anything other than in a financial context.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/monies

I would love to know why the usage has changed (twice).

[Twoddle]

I'll stick with the regular pluralising of words ending in "vowel + y", which is to add an s, so "money" becomes "moneys". Wikipedia, however, gives "monies" as a rarely used form and points out that there are other exceptions to the rule: "quy" becomes "quies" (as in "soliloquy/soliloquies"), and "trolley" is sometimes pluralised as "trollies".

While on the subject of non-standard plurals, in my formative years I learnt that the plural of "canon" was "canon", but increasingly frequently I hear "canons" used. What do the members here use? (I've also heard the plural of "deer" as "deers", but I'm not having that or it'll be "sheeps" next.)

[Verbivore]

For bibliophiles.

[Verbivore]

Jan 5, 2019 11:44:47 GMT Twoddle said:

[...]
While on the subject of non-standard plurals, in my formative years I learnt that the plural of "canon" was "canon", but increasingly frequently I hear "canons" used. What do the members here use? (I've also heard the plural of "deer" as "deers", but I'm not having that or it'll be "sheeps" next.)

I don't know about canon (law secular and ecclesiastical; principle, criterion, literature, music; the canon of a cathedral) but I do believe the plural of cannon (big gun) to be cannon, and so use that s-less plural. Similarly deer/deer, sheep/sheep, dolphin/dolphin … .

[Dave Miller]

I’d say “two cannon”, but that’s because I like to use the oddity of that plural form. That is, I’d recognise “two cannons” as a valid, but more boring, alternative.

I wonder whether it connects in some way with the pattern by which animals are often denoted by ess-less plurals: a herd of two hundred gazelle; we bagged seven grouse; the farm was overrun by zebra.

[Twoddle]

"Canon" [sic]. Oh Gawd, I must have been away with the fairies.

Jan 5, 2019 21:14:50 GMT Dave Miller said:

… a herd of two hundred gazelle, we bagged seven grouse; the farm was overrun by zebra.

Blimey, that was quite an afternoon.

[Verbivore]

Jan 5, 2019 22:34:03 GMT Twoddle said:

"Canon" [sic]. Oh Gawd, I must have been away with the fairies.

Canon is given as an alternative to cannon by the OED, Twod, so I shouldn't be too stressed. The OED gives an example from 1525: "5 gret gonnes of brasse called cannons", T. Magnus in State Papers (1836) IV. 325. The OED also notes: "The spellings canon and cannon occur side by side down nearly to 1800, though the latter is the more frequent after c 1660".

But what about clerical canons? If the canon (clergyman) of Winchester Cathedral and the canon of St Mary's Cathedral were in the same room would they be two canon or two canons? For ecclesiastical canon (i.e church law) the OED gives canons for the plural, as in "The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical agreed upon by Convocation, and ratified by King James I under the Great Seal in 1603".