CW Question: words that can be singular & plural.

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1

<p>Question: The young fish (were) very tiny, yet each of (them ate) many times (its) own (weight in) solid food every day. </p>

<p>Brackets () = Underlined parts</p>

<p>This question seems a bit weird to me. All the underlined parts and the parts that aren't underlined are correct to me except for "the young fish were" were is correct as it relates to them so I'd never change it to the "the young fish was" .... I'd change it to the "The young fishes were" .... I assumed they made an error/typo but after some research I realized that "fish" is actually singular or plural depending on the context.</p>

<p>My question: For the knowledge of people (including me) who aren't aware that words like "fish" could be both singular and plural.. what other words are there that can be both singular and plural depending on context?</p>

2

<p>Look at the phrase “yet each of them.” This implies that there are multiple fish.</p>

3

<p>I know there are multiple but what I didn’t realize was fish could be both plural and singular. I just assumed they had a typo and meant fishes. I didn’t know that fishes meant different species of fish and not more than 1 of the same fish. I just thought it referred to more than 1 fish regardless of specie. </p>

<p>So I wanted to know what other words are there like this (not counting words like sheep and deer cause there is no such thing as sheeps and deers)</p>