Plural Of Roof And Hoof

And this is how you get hoofs.

Plural of roof and hoof. And just like roof hoofs was the dominant one. The plural form of hoof is hoofs or hooves. Dwarf dwarves elf elves hoof hooves roof rooves. 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.

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. Hoof comes from the old english word hof. On the other hand spoof simply adds the plural s suffix to become spoofs. It wasn t until the last 40 50 years that hooves began to pick up steam.

When at school i was taught that the plural of roof is rooves and the plural of hoof is hooves. But at the same time there are several exceptions form this rule. I was taught rooves in grade school on the east coast. Not all nouns follow simple rules when transitioning from single to plural form.

Hoofs is a much older rendering of the plural form of hoof. This is exactly how hooves is obtained as the first plural of the noun. Hoofs is also a plural form of hoof the horny part of an animal s foot. 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. Hoof for instance becomes hooves in the plural. English pluralization can be complicated. Maybe my teachers were wrong.

The plural of hof is hofas which when pronounced would have sounded like hooves. Just like roof hoof also started with two plural forms hoofs and hooves.