No One Can Score 30/30 In This Tricky Plural Forms Test

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We gave this test to 100 high school students and no one got more than 15/30 correctly. Can you beat those odds?

#language #knowledge

What are your thoughts on this subject?

1085 Comments

David Ching

Susan Lake-Harris, I think the plural of memo is mema.

Jean Fox

Lupe Hernandez, too right.

Lupe Hernandez

No, I did not totally flunk, the only flunky or flunkies are the persons who wrote the test and don't know the answers.

Michael Brain

How can you pass and fail?

Joy Holbrook

Don't just complain, downvote and report. It takes seconds.

Joy Holbrook

Susan Lake-Harris, thank you. I was marked as a fail but got them all correct.

Susan Lake-Harris

Looks like everyone failed - including me! I checked the answers – of which I was correct for 29... I suspect we all fail if we don’t get 30/30. For the correct answers, see below: Elves; Runners-up; Sheep; Roofs (except rooves is often still used in speech though not considered standard anymore); Diagnoses; Bison; Species; Humans; Syllabuses AND Syllabi – both are correct; Culs-de-sac in preference to cul-de-sacs – the second is more common in casual English; Memos; Cellos (because it’s from Italian, so no “e”); Crises; Appendices; Oases; Wives; Women; Calves; Teeth; Deer (though deers is sometimes used if referring to different species as a group – e.g. a red deer with a roe deer with a reindeer all in one enclosure at a zoo); Halves; Candy-men; Moose; Fungi; Domino AND Dominoes – both are correct; Curricula (though curriculums is being used outside academic writing in the good old USA); Emphases; Atlases (if you’re speaking English, but it could be Atlantes if you go with Greek); Mangoes (unless you’re in the US where it’s usually spelt without the “e”); and finally, Criteria.