Singular Plurality

Some years ago I had to write some notes about certain premises where malt was made - and, with much fascination, visited two of these; one up-to-date (I suppose ‘state-of-the-art’ would be today’s clichéed way of putting it), the other splendidly old-fashioned.

But should I, I wondered, write of such a place as ‘a maltings’ ? Should I talk to the proprietor about ‘this maltings’, or ‘these maltings’ ?

We read (and we speak) of ‘taking the dog to a kennels’. Can we visit ‘a riding stables’ ? The Encarta dictionary tells us that ‘hustings’ is a plural word - but defines it (partly) as ‘an election platform’. Perhaps we should understand the term as similar to an actor speaking of ‘treading these boards’, when he means ‘this stage’; but that is not a sound comparison.

Politics ‘is’ an activity; mathematics ‘is’ a subject for study, as ‘is’ physics and as ‘is’ economics. But your study could also be birds or old churches. ‘Rare Breeds is my speciality’, a farmer might say, since ‘Rare Breeds’ is a familiar generic term. Similarly, no one is likely to wince if we comment that ‘Draughts is a simpler game than Chess’, because the (plural) draughts ‘is’ the name of the game.

The other doubtful word is ‘whereabouts’. “Honest, I don’t know where his whereabouts is”, you might tell a policeman as your mate slips hurriedly round a corner. ? Or should I have said ‘his whereabout’ ? I mean, how many whereabouts can a person have ?

Singular Plurality