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!