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1 Types or varieties of:
•food and drink, e.g. yogurt/yogurts, pasta/pastas, rum/rums.
• plants: e.g. clover/clovers, barley/barleys.
•fabric: e.g. gingham/ginghams, silk/silks.
• certain languages or subjects: e.g. English/Englishes, music/musics.
• metals and alloys: e.g. steel/steels, solder/solders.
• rocks: e.g. granite/granites, lava/lavas, clay/clays.
• chemical compounds: e.g. fluoride/fluorides, hydride/hydrides.
• other substances or materials: e.g. rind/rinds, soil/soils, sealskin/sealskins,
suncream/suncream.
2 Portions or units of something, especially food and drink: e.g. lager (glasses/
bottles of lager = lagers), paella (portions of paella = paellas).
3 Shades of colours: e.g. pink/pinks, scarlet/scarlets, grey/greys.
4 An instance of:
• an action or process: e.g. completion (an instance of completing a property
sale = completions), genocide (act of genocide = genocides), lambing (an act
of lambing = lambings).
•a surgical operation: e.g. circumcision/circumcisions.
• an emotion, pain, or feeling: e.g. backache/backaches, grief (an instance or
cause of grief = griefs).
5 An area of land of a specified type: e.g. bogland/boglands, terrain/terrains.
Other terms relating to nouns
[as modifier]: used to mark a noun which can be placed before another noun in
order to modify its meaning. For examples see boom and bedside.
[treated as sing.]: used to mark a noun which is plural in form but is used with a
singular verb, e.g. ‘mumps’ in
mumps is one of the major childhood diseases
or
‘genetics’ in
genetics has played a major role in this work
.
[treated as sing. or pl.]: used to mark a noun which can be used with either a
singular or a plural verb without any change in meaning or in the form of the
headword (often called
collective nouns
, because they typically denote groups of
people considered collectively), e.g.
the government are committed to this policy
or
the government is trying to gag its critics
.
[in sing.]: used to mark a noun which is used as a count noun but is never or rarely
found in the plural, e.g. ear in
an ear for rhythm and melody
.
Terms relating to verbs
[with obj.]: used to mark a verb which takes a direct object, i.e. is transitive (the
type of direct object being shown in brackets in the definition). For example, see
belabour.
[no obj.]: used to mark a verb which takes no direct object, i.e. is intransitive. For
example, see bristle.
[with adverbial]: used to mark a verb which takes an obligatory adverbial, typically
a prepositional phrase, without which the sentence in which the verb occurs would
sound unnatural or odd, e.g. barge into under barge.
Terms relating to adjectives
[attrib.]: used to mark an adjective which is normally used attributively, i.e. comes
before the noun which it modifies, e.g. certain in
a certain man
(not
the man is
certain
, which means something very different). Note that attributive use is
standard for many adjectives, especially those in specialist or technical fields: the
[attrib.] label is not used in such cases.
[predic.]: used to mark an adjective which is normally used predicatively, i.e. comes
after the verb, e.g. ajar in
the door was ajar
(not
the ajar door
).