Tuesday, November 20, 2018

grammatical number - Is there any difference between "tuxedo" and "avocado" with regard to their plural form?

An English exam is slowly coming closer and closer, so I'm trying to revise...




I'm holding an English learning book right now, and the very first chapter is dedicated to regular and irregular plural forms of nouns. One exercise wants me to cross out words that are not fitting; for example, from "cows", "tables", "bags", "news", the last noun ("news") goes away, because it only has plural form; and from "play", "family", "dictionary", "university", "play" goes away, because its plural is "plays" and not "plaies".



So now I'm stuck with "potato", "avocado", "tomato", "tuxedo". As far as I'm aware, the plural forms of these nouns are: "potatoes", "avocados", "tomatoes", "tuxedos". So we can say there are two groups with two words per each group: "potatoes" and "tomatoes" vs "avocados" and "tuxedos". Yet the book authors want me to cross "tuxedo" out. How is "tuxedo" any different than "avocado"? To me, these two words are exactly the same, since, in both cases, the plural form is constructed by adding "-s" and not "-es".



What am I failing to grasp?



Edit: As per the request from the comments:




tux•e•do




n.[countable], pl. -dos.




from WordReference.com definition of tuxedo




av•o•ca•do



n.[countable], pl. -dos.





from WordReference.com definition of avocado




to•ma•to



n.[countable], pl. -toes.





from WordReference.com definition of tomato




po•ta•to



n., pl. -toes.




from WordReference.com definition of potato

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