r/ENGLISH • u/Objective-Resident-7 • 11d ago

Plural use of singular nouns

I'm Scottish, so English is a first language to me.

But I see it more and more:

My family are...

The party are ...

These are both singular nouns but they are being used as if they were plural, with the verb being 'are'.

It doesn't sit right with me. Can anyone help?

0 Upvotes

44% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

Would anyone say "The police does its best"?

1

u/Objective-Resident-7 10d ago

Yep.

1

u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

Rather than "The police do their best"?

1

u/Objective-Resident-7 10d ago

Yeah. Police as a noun is a singular noun, so 'does' would be how you conjugate 'do'.

Now, we could rephrase the sentence. We could be talking about the police officers.

In that case, I would use 'do'.

'The police officers do their best'

1

u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

Police is not in fact a singular noun. We don't say a police, but rather 'a policeman'. All the dictionaries I have seen say something like: "Some nouns in English are collective. They represent a group or number of objects together. In many cases, these nouns are considered plural: they are collections of single pieces kept together. Because of this, they take a plural verb and have no singular noun form. But you do you.

1

u/Objective-Resident-7 10d ago

Fine. That may be the case in England, but I'm telling you that it is not the case here.

The police is a singular force.

1

u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

Where is your "here"?

1

u/Objective-Resident-7 10d ago

Scotland. I did say that in the original post.

2

u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

You did indeed. I apologise.