When both nouns joined by “or” are singular, the verb form is easy: It’s singular, as we saw in “Ned or Nancy is.” When both nouns joined by “or” are plural, the verb is plural ...

In other words, they’re singular and plural at the same time. And since verbs are supposed to agree in number with their subjects — one cat is, two cats are — the roughly 200 collective ...

Singular data is now more common than the plural in books, and far more prevalent on the web. Data is hardly the first foreign word to undergo grammatical change in English.

So usually with singular and plural, we do recognize that they’re synonyms, more or less. But we also recognize that maybe there’s something kind of unique to one of them or to the other one.

1. News. Origin. Late Middle English: plural of new, translating Old French noveles or medieval Latin nova ‘new things’.The first known use of news was in the 15th century. Definition. Newly ...