Plural Of Roof And Hoof

Hoof comes from the old english word hof.

Plural of roof and hoof.

And this is how you get hoofs. When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. The plural form of hoof is hoofs or hooves. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun.

Poof and poofs follow the same rule. Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural.

When to use hooves hooves is the newer and now more common plural form of the hoof. But hooves woke up in the 20th century and by about 1970 it overtook hoofs in usage and that s where it has stayed. 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. 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.

Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. Should it become rooves like hooves.

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. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

English pluralization can be complicated. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one.