复数（PLUR-el）是一个名词的形式，通常表示一个以上的人、事物或实例。与单数对比。

尽管英语的复数形式通常是后缀-s或-es，但一些名词（如sheep）的复数形式与单数形式相同（见零复数），而一些其他名词（如dust）没有复数形式。

词源学

拉丁语中的“更多”

实例和意见

不寻常复数

"[P]hysics, mathematics, economics, linguistics, and hydraulics are all words that are singular in sense and are construed as singular, despite their form. They do not have plurals. Politics and ethics, by contrast, are construed as plural but do not readily admit a singular form. Arithmetic and logic are singular in sense and form, but do not readily accept a plural. . . .Pants, trousers, breeches, scissors, shears, bellows, spectacles, and glasses are all plural in form, and they need a plural verb: These trousers are too small; these scissors are blunt. The curiosity is that we often re-double the plural character of the things by referring to a pair of pants, scissors, etc. Yet the semantically identical two scissors, two bellows would be absurd." (Julian Burnside, Word Watching. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004) "As a general rule, game or other animals often take the same form for the singular and plural: one elk, six elk (*elks). This is more often the case in a hunting/sporting context: She hunts lion in Africa each year. In another context, the -s plural is more likely to be used: She saw three lions at the zoo. Here are some other interesting examples of nouns that have identical singular and plural forms: three aircraft (spacecraft, hovercraft, etc.) six head of cattle Look up aircraft and head (as in of cattle) in a dictionary to see what they say about the origins of these words and the likely reasons for their forms. Also, what's the plural of a computer mouse?" (Anne Lobeck and Kristin Denham, Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language. Wiley Blackwell, 2014) "Now, y'all is plural. Believe me, I use the word a lot." (Nick Stokes in "Fannysmackin'." CSI, 2006)

多重复数

"The two champions for variations in plurals are octopus and rhinoceros. The two most obvious plurals of octopus are octopuses and (incorrectly since the root is Greek, not Latin) octopi. The proper Greek plural is octopodes--so three possible plurals for octopus. Similarly for rhinoceros, we have rhinoceroses, rhinoceri (incorrectly), rhinoceros (presumably pronounced differently from the singular) and (an obsolete but correct form) rhinocerotes. In fact, rhinoceros is the English word with the most possible plural forms: four in all. Even more confusingly, one word may be the plural form of two different singular words. So bases means more than one of both base and basis, and ellipses can refer to both ellipse and ellipsis. The winner in this category is axes, which is the plural of ax, axe and axis." (Richard Watson Todd, Much Ado About English: Up and Down the Bizarre Byways of a Fascinating Language. Nicholas Brealey, 2006)

不规则复数和双复数

"In his song One Hippopotami, the comedian Alan Sherman sang, 'The plural of "half" is "whole"; the plural of "two minks" is "one mink stole."' It is an astute observation. The linguist Peter Tiersma has found that whenever a set of objects can easily be construed as a single assemblage, a regular plural is in danger of congealing into a mass noun or an irregular plural. This is happening today to the noun data, which often refers to large quantities of information and which is easily conceived of as stuff rather than things; the word is turning from a plural (many data) to a mass noun (much data). . . .Nonstandard dialects are filled with double plurals such as oxens, dices, lices, and feets, and that is how we got the strangest plural in Standard English, children. Once it was childer, with the old plural suffix -er also seen in the German equivalent Kinder. But people stopped hearing it as a plural, and when they had to refer to more than one child, they added a second plural marker, -en. Today many rural and foreign speakers still don't think of children as plural, and have added a third suffix, yielding the triply plural childrens." (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules, Basic Books, 1999)

复数中较轻的部分

"I think sometimes the word overseas is pluralized unnecessarily. The way I look at it, New York to London is 'oversea.' After all, there's only one sea in between them." (George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Hyperion, 2004) A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother, "Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today." The grandmother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool. "That's interesting." she said. "How do you make babies?" "It's simple," the girl replied. "You just change y to i and add es."

英语课（作者不详）

如果复数形式的mouse应该是，并且是，mouse，

那么house的复数形式当然应该是hice，

松鸡应该是灰色的，配偶应该是香料

同样的道理，这件衬衫也应该变成布利斯。

并考虑鹅的复数鹅；

那么一辆双排马车应该被称为双排马车，

套索应该是neese，驼鹿应该是meese

如果妈妈的爸爸应该是双胞胎，那就是爸爸。

那么如果有一件事是这样的，还有一些叫做，

我想不止一顶帽子是软管，

gnat就是gnose，pat就是pose，

同样地，rat的复数形式是rose。