When I was a girl (and I walked barefoot to school no matter the weather ) I was taught that the plural of roof was rooves.
While going through some of my son's school work yesterday there was this rule:

Change F to v for words ending in f or fe.
For example: loaf/loaves.
Some exceptions are roofs, chiefs and hoofs.

When did this happen?

Actually, I would have done 'hooves' as well. Now I'm more confused. I sometimes wonder how they can let untrained people teach their kids. LOL

I'm 20, and have never heard "rooves", but I'd definitely use "hooves" and not "hoofs"!

Dictionaries give both hoofs and hooves for the plural of hoof, but I can't find a dictionary that gives rooves. Indeed, I seem to remember teachers stigmatizing rooves as wrong when I was a kid. Maybe it's a dialectal thing.

I think there are other exceptions besides those in Conor's book. For example, the plural of proof is certainly proofs, and barristers get briefs from instructing solicitors.

eek I've been stigmatised??

To stop myself thinking I was making it up I got onto google and found this:



So now I'm stigmatised AND uncommon! LOL

I must look into hooves .. perhaps that's one of those English/American ones, Reeshy?

Another word that is like that is "safe" to make "safes," not "saves."

I saw something that Australian children into the 1980s used "rooves," which is acceptable, but not commonly used.

From answers.com:

Life to lives seems reasonable but what then are we to do with lifes' little wonders?

Wife to wives also seems reasonable but no man ever dare go plural on that one.

Working backwards, Is the singular of hives supposed to have been hife all these years? And should I add only chife to my cream cheese? I'd certainly become nauseated if upon the ocean blue I was rocked by a single wafe.


Edit for PS: I grew up in New England in the 50s and we used the term rooves even then. Certain isolated rural areas of New England countryside still used the term, except we do not pahk our cahs on the rooves anymore (proved too damaging to the fellahs inside the cah and buildin.)

I've never seen "hoofs" used in British English (I'm Scottish), but it's not as weird as "rooves"! English is very strange with plurals, haha!

I thought it was just me, I captioned some photos with rooves a few years ago and got picked up on it although I'd used it all my life. We still say it like that and wonder why they changed it considering it followed a standard rule? Now I know I wasn't wrong as originally thought I'm going back to the old way, and would recommend we all do as language follows common usage.

Looks like we have our own "beliefs" (oops..."believes") of the correct word.

The exception that proofs the rule??

I will go to my graf (singular of graves) disagreeing with this general guideline (not rule since there are exceptions). Maybe the openings in my sief (singular of sieves) aeren't large enough to allow passage of such a too broad restriction. Maybe the Cheves and Chieves (Chef and Chief plurals iaw this rule) should go to their respective kitchens and tepees to come up with a new useless guideline (I before e except after c is the most rediculous of them all. There are more exceptions than words that follow that one)

Did some one say neckerchieves? Gusundtiedt!

English is not a very technical language. As mehaul says, there are probably more exceptions than words that follow rules. English is one of the most irregular languages I've had experience of (probably THE most irregular actually), so there are always going to be oddities. I think only Esperanto can be learned without irregularities!

It's a wonder to me that any of us ever learns English at all!

I too find hooves perfectly acceptable, but find rooves looks peculiar. I only remember seeing it as roofs in the plural form.

Move the apostrophe slightly to the left perhaps?

No, I meant the possessive of lifes plural, But if you want it to be French, okay: L'ifes.

In Canada we say "rooves" but write "roofs". Silly!

I'm Canadian and when I was in elementary school (too many moons ago to count), we spelled it as "rooves" and pronounced it with the long ooooo sound, which may be one example of why so many non-Canadians used to think the majority of us say "ooot and aboot" instead of "out and about". Americans spelled it as "roofs" and prounounced it as something similar to "ruwffs" - like the "woof" sound a dog might make (no disparagement intended, btw). "Roofs" is now an acceptable spelling here, but as lindamarie has stated, we still don't pronounce it as if we were saying "hoofs".

In most "circles" here (including the Arctic one lol), "hooves" is a noun and refers to more than one animal foot. "Hoofs" is sort of like a "vernacular verb" and refers to movement, such as dancing, or as in "he doesn't have a car, so he hoofs it to work".

Sometimes I blame the global popularity of Microsoft products for certain spellings "going away". I work in a GOVERNMENT office and I do not have the ability to change my spell-checker dictionary. For reasons unfathomable to me, our default (which can only be changed by some IT admin guy) is U.S. English (as if any American would be reading a single one of our communications lol).

These days the so-called "rules" seem to be changed at will. Words are added and removed from dictionaries every year. What gives "them" the right to remove ANY word?? If it existed at all, it's still a WORD, whether it is used in everyday speech "on the street" or not. Do they really think that by putting in new "cool buzzwords" and deleting perfectly good ones that have been in use for centuries, that dictionaries will suddenly become popular best sellers that people read for entertainment??? Who ARE these people - and who put the current lot "in charge" anyway? I must have missed the memo...

(helplessly giggling now).

Of course, must be the word Thiefs (Thieves? take your pick) making off with all our good words!

I was taught and still use the word 'rooves'

I am a Canadian that pronounces the plural of roof as rooves, but it does look funny to me to spell it that way (I have a general preference for British English). In my government office, I can select "Canadian English" for spell check, which is then displayed as "English (UK)." I remember protesting as a child that it should be "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

In Canada, we have the famous hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs- which should, in my mind, be the Maple Leaves, but apparently they were named after a Maple Leaf Regiment that had been nicknamed the Maple Leafs... They were called the St. Patricks (or St. Pats) before that, and there was just one of him.

You've never tried to learn Russian, have you?!

I was in school in Canada in the 80s, but was taught that roof --> roofs. I've never noticed anyone saying "rooves" either, but, I do live in Toronto, a city heavily influenced by the large immigrant population.

Ah, I have, and stand corrected. Alas, my Russian never got very far and now I have little time to go back to it, unfortunately.

I think it's funny that the few of us who did or do use 'rooves' are spread so far and wide!

On the news just now they're talking about a large storm and the youngish weather man is saying "rooves" .... got me wondering how he would spell it!

A friend of mine from Kent still uses "rooves", at least in his writing; I don't know if I've ever heard him say it!