We raided our offline Whistler archives for a selection of classics…

AND NOW FOR THE PLURALS
(with apologies to John Donne)

Let’s begin with a box; the plural is boxes
And go on to ox, plural oxen, not oxes.
There’s a bird called a goose; its plural is geese,
Yet the plural of moose is mooses, not meese;
Which reminds one of mouse, who plural is mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
Now the plural of man is undoubtedly men,
So the logical plural of pan must be pen.
The plural of foot is not foots but feet;
Though a foot wears a boot, two boots are not beet,
And a tooth is but one of a mouthful of teeth.
So what about booth? Could the plural be beeth?
And if one thing is that one, the plural is those
Yet a hat in its plural can never be hose.
We may speak of brothers and also of brethren;
We may speak of mothers but never say methren.
If the masculine of pronouns are he, his and him,
Then the ladies, God bless ‘em, get she, shis and shim!

Submitted by Hilary Gilmore, September 1995 edition
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