The Curious Case of Plurals: Why We Say Mice but Not Hices
English can be maddening. Most nouns politely follow the rule: add an -s or -es to make them plural. Cat → cats. Dog → dogs. But then there are rebels: mouse → mice, child → children, goose → geese.
Why these exceptions? Why don’t we say hices for more than one house? The answer lies in the messy history of English—a story of invasions, shifting sounds, and half-abandoned grammar rules.
Regular Plurals: The Simple Rule
The standard plural rule (-s or -es) comes from Old English, where most nouns added endings to show number. Over centuries, those endings simplified. By Middle English, -s became the dominant form.
That’s why today:
- Most nouns take -s (cars, tables, books).
- Nouns ending in sibilants take -es (buses, boxes).
If English had stayed tidy, all plurals would follow this pattern. But English never stays tidy.
Irregular Plurals: Survivors of Old Grammar
Some irregular plurals are fossils from Old English’s complex system. Let’s break them down:
1. Vowel Mutations (Umlauts)
- Mouse → mice
- Goose → geese
- Man → men
- Woman → women
This comes from a sound change in Old English where a vowel in the root shifted when paired with an old plural ending. The ending disappeared, but the vowel change stuck—leaving us with today’s odd plurals.
2. -en Plurals
- Child → children
- Ox → oxen
- (Old forms: ey → eyen for “eyes”)
In Old English, -en was a plural ending for some nouns. Most faded, but a few linger, giving us children and oxen.
3. Zero Plurals
- Sheep → sheep
- Deer → deer
- Moose → moose
These words are the same in singular and plural, often because Old English or other languages didn’t mark them separately—or because they were mass nouns treated as collectives.
4. Borrowed Plurals
English has borrowed words wholesale, often keeping their original plurals:
- Cactus → cacti (Latin)
- Phenomenon → phenomena (Greek)
- Criterion → criteria (Greek)
- Alumnus → alumni (Latin)
Sometimes English adapts these (cactuses is now acceptable), but the older plural forms persist.
Why Not “Hices”?
So why don’t we say hice for multiple houses? Because house never belonged to the group of nouns that underwent vowel mutation. In Old English, its plural was hūs (same as singular), and later became houses with the regular -s.
Mice survived as irregular because it was part of a different Old English class. Hice never existed.
The Role of Norman French
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the language of law and prestige. French plurals often followed the -s rule, which reinforced it as English’s default. The irregulars survived mostly in everyday speech, while formal language leaned toward regular -s plurals.
That’s why irregular plurals are common for basic, old words (man, child, mouse) but not for newer borrowings (computer → computers).
Modern Quirks of Plurals
English plurals continue to evolve:
- Foreign plurals fading: People increasingly say cactuses and octopuses instead of cacti or octopi.
- Brand names resisting pluralization: Some companies insist on Lego bricks instead of Legos.
- Humor & internet slang: Playful plurals like doggos or yeets spread online.
Language users bend rules creatively, and some of these forms may become mainstream.
Why Irregulars Stick
Irregular plurals endure because they’re part of the most common vocabulary. Words like men, women, children, mice, feet are used so often that speakers just learn them without thinking. Rare words usually regularize (fax → faxes), but frequent ones keep their quirks.
Final Thoughts: English’s Plural Personality
English plurals are like archaeological layers. Beneath the neat -s rule lie traces of Old English vowel shifts, Germanic -en endings, borrowed Latin and Greek forms, and collective nouns that refused to change.
So the next time you say mice instead of mouses, remember—you’re speaking history. English is messy, irregular, and illogical. But that’s also what makes it fascinating.
