Of Oxen and Oxes
John Robertson
Professor and Chair of Linguistics
Brigham Young University
We have been taught in school that there is one and
only one plural for ox, which is oxen: One ox; two oxen. Normally, this is a true statement. Nevertheless, under certain, metaphorical circumstances, no normal English speaker
would be satisfied that the plural of ox is oxen. Consider a hypothetical case where one observes two exceptionally clumsy ballroom dancers. A disparaging remark might emerge,
"Look at those two dancers out there; now they're a couple of clumsy oxes!" Oxes and not oxen would be the "right" term in these circumstances because oxen would otherwise be
interpreted literally. They are, after all, not literal oxen
From the above observation, we might consider the following, mostly-true generalization: If a noun has an irregular member (like the noun ox with its plural oxen), that noun may be regularized (ox is to oxes as box is to boxes) if it is used metaphorically. Consider the following examples:
- Referring to the actual bird: "There's a couple of silly geese."
- Referring metaphorically to a couple of silly people: "There's a couple of silly gooses."
- Referring to the actual foliage: "the Toronto maple leaves"
- Referring to the team: "The Toronto Maple Leafs"
- Referring to the bug: "There's a couple of real lice."
- Referring to undesirable people: "There's a couple of real louses."
When computers and their mice (or is it mouses?) first came out, there was considerable ink spilled over what the plural of "computer mouse" should be. Do you order "a gross of computer mice," or "a gross of computer mouses?" From a linguist's point of view, resolving the issue of "computer mice" or "computer mouses" is not nearly as interesting as trying to understand why so many people, independent of each other, would simultaneously be tempted to use the "wrong" form mouses and not mice.
The answer seems to have something to do with a tendency in English to put the normal plural ending (e.g. oxes) on nouns that have irregular plurals (e.g. oxen) when that noun is used in anything but its literal sense.