Plurals of words ending in ‘o’. Do they end with ‘s’ or ‘es’?

Plurals of words ending in ‘o’. Do they end with ‘s’ or ‘es’?

Nouns that end in o can make their plural by added s or es. Are they patterns that can help us know which ending is correct?

Words ending in S

These words end is s, but do you know why?

Hint look at the letter before the o.

Radios, patios, zoos, kangaroos.

The letter before the o is a vowel, in that case we make a plural by adding an s.

The following words also end in s.  What do they all have in common?

Kilos, photos, logos, typos.

They are all shortened forms of a longer word:

Kilogrammes (kilos), photographs (photos), logograms (logos), typographs (typos).

We just add s to these words:

Eskimos, Picassos, Filipinos.

What do these words have in common?

They are all proper nouns, so we just add an s to make them plural.

How about these words?

Tacos, sombreros, stilettos, solos.

Why do we add just an s?

Because they are words from another language.

Tacos and sombreros (Spanish), stilettos and solos (Italian).

We also only add an s to these words:

Kimonos, avocados, casinos, infernos, torsos.

All these words a recent or newer additions to the English language, often ‘borrowed’ from other languages.

Words ending in ES

These words all end in es:

Potatoes, tomatoes, echoes, embargoes, heroes, vetoes.

All these words are words that entered the English language and Anglicised a long time ago.

Often the spellings may vary, try to keep to the above rules to maintain consistency with your spelling!

Glossary of terms

Abbreviated words	Some words used started as longer words have now been shorted or abbreviated.	O'clock (was of the clock), phone (telephone).
Adjective	A describing word	Hungry, happy, upset
Adverb	Modifies or qualifies a verb	How? What?
Antonyms	Words that have opposite meanings	Old, new. Dirty, clean
Capital Letter	Sometimes as known as 'upper case'. To be used at the start of the sentence and with Nouns.	November, Alex, Wednesday.
Commas	Complex sentences contain more than one clause. Commas help separate these clauses. They are read as a slight pause.	After breakfast, we went to school
Conjuction	Connecting words	But, and, so, yet.
Determiner	Identifies the noun	Which book? I will eat both cakes!
Dialogue	Characters in a story talk to one another, the dialogue appears in speech marks.	"The weather is aweful," complained Charlie
Exclamation	Used instead of full stops to show certain emotions like surprise, anger, joy or fear	That was great!
Full stop	Mark the end of a sentence.	Yes please.
Homophones	Words that sound the same, but are spelt differently and have different meanings.	Knight, night. Allowed and aloud.
Idioms	Local expressions or sayings, not to be taken literally	"Bob opened a can of worms!"
Injection/exclamation	A word to express emotions by the speaker	Hi!, Excuse me!, Sorry!
Lower Case	Used after a Capital letter in a sentence.	September, Monday
Metaphor	Words that describe something as if it were something else.	"She is a loose cannon!"
Noun	A word used to indicate or indentfy a person, thing, place or idea	John, Earth, chair
Onomatopoeia	Words that sound the same as they describe.	Hiss, hoot.
Plurals	Two or more of something	Toys, babies, foxes.
Possessive apostrophes	Used to show that something belongs to a person or thing.	The boy's shoes, the babies' toys.
Prefixes	Added to the beginning of words that change their meaning. Different prefixes have various meanings.	bi+plane = biplane.
Preposition	Words used before others, to help make sense	About, above, after, in
Pronoun	A word used to replace a Noun.	Instead of Paul you would use 'him' or 'his'
Punctuation	They are used to help the reader make sense of our writing.	, . ! ?
Question Mark	Used instead of full stops to show that a question is being asked.	What time is it?
Subordinate Clause	Complex sentences contain more than one clause. Commas help separate these clauses. The subordinate clause gives us more information and is embeded in the sentence.	"The cat, which was black, ran up the tree."
Suffixes	Added to the end of words that change their meaning. Different suffixes have various meanings.	Physician, explosion, session, reduction
Synonyms	Words that have similar meanings	Happy, joyful, excited, contented.
The Narrator	The person telling the story. Sometimes the narrator is the story sometimes they are not.	I wish I went to that part or Charlie really wished he went to that party.
Unstressed vowels	Although in a word these vowels are difficult to hear when pronounced or are not pronounced.	Literature, jewellery
Verb	An action word	Leran, walk, run
Vowel endings	Words that end in vowels	Bannana, spaghetti, dominio, emu.
Vowels	Important letters of the alphabet that help make words	A,E,I,O,U
Word roots	Words that come from or are related to other words.	approval or disapprove come from approve.
Words from other languages	English uses lots of words from other languages, they may have the same or a different meaning.	Pizza, bungalow, chalet, chow mein.

Polite Words

Polite words make our sentences more ‘friendly’!

They are nice words to use.

Try adding them to sentences. 

“Excuse me”.

Example: “Excuse me, may I use the toilet”?

“Please”

Example: “Please may I have the pencil”?

“May I…”

Example: “Please may I have a glass of water”?

“Thank you”

Example: “Thank you for the cup of tea”.

“Goodbye” 

Example: “Goodbye, see you later”.

“Nice to meet you”

Example: “Hello, it is nice to meet you”.

“Sorry”

Example: “I am sorry you are not very well”.