1131: Many A... Jan 13, 2018

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There are plenty of words that are plural in form but singular in meaning, such as 'news', 'dominoes', and 'physics', and likewise some words act in the opposite way, but the phrase "many a..." makes whatever would follow it singular. Strangely then, the meaning of the phrase is "a large number of", so semantically it will seem plural, such as in the example from Learner's Dictionary, "many a politician has promised to make changes" where both 'politician' and its corresponding verbs are singular. While this trend may exist as exceptions to the rules of pluralization for a handful of terms such as the ones listed above, it is far rarer to find it in something phrasal like this. If you know any examples of other phrases that are different semantically to what the grammar would suggest, write it in a comment below. You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

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