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Why is the plural version of deer identical to the singular version?

If mouse became mice, then why did the singular deer not change to something else in the plural?

tchrist
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khyati
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    Many words are, and that is the joy of, and what is infuriating about English. You may be glad to hear however of something I discovered only today, when we were at an animal park with our grandchildren. That is that the word 'mongoose' has two possible plurals, 'mongeese, and mongooses'. And I am a native speaker of English of almost seventy years. So I hope that illustrates that there is no quick way with these things. It takes a lifetime. – WS2 Aug 03 '14 at 17:48
  • ya thats right it take long time.but right now for me its really important to know all about it. – khyati Aug 03 '14 at 17:57
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    If you are an English-language *learner, you might enjoy our sister-site for [ell.se]. That’s because our sister-site is a Q&A site especially made for learners*, in contrast to the current English Language and Usage site, which is instead “a Q&A site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts”**. – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 18:19
  • Related (possible dupe): Why is “shrimp” the plural of “shrimp” – Tim Lymington Aug 03 '14 at 20:16
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    @BlessedGeek this is a good question for experts, linguists and etymologists, as stated by the site. This type of request cannot be answered and explained by the vast majority of native speakers. Compared to the related question "Why is shrimp the plural of shrimp? this question has a more authoritative and complete answer. StoneyB's post lacks (if any observation were to be levelled) back up source(s) and references. – Mari-Lou A Aug 04 '14 at 06:04
  • @Mari-LouA You could say that most native speakers have no i...deer :P – JamesRyan Aug 04 '14 at 10:06
  • @Josh61 The "bounty type" description given is "one or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty". – Dan Bron Apr 24 '15 at 13:12
  • what about species, aircraft and jeans? – user1914292 Apr 24 '15 at 14:08
  • *Why* is not a question that can be answered about phenomena like this. All that can be said is that there is a class of animal words, including fish, salmon, deer, sheep, grouse, elk, and others, but not including minnow, cow, pig, boar, goat, chicken, turkey, and others, that have zero plural marking. There isn't any known reason why this is the case, but it is the case. – John Lawler Apr 25 '15 at 03:14
  • @Mari-LouA See the adddition to my Answer. – StoneyB on hiatus May 29 '17 at 14:27

2 Answers2

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It's a matter of historical origin and subsequent development.

In the oldest recorded English deer belonged to the neuter declension, which did not have a distinct plural ending in the nominative and accusative cases. (It is believed that this declension did have plurals in Proto-Germanic, but they disappeared before English or any immediate ancestor was written down.) At that time there was no ambiguity, since the determiners accompanying these nouns did change in the plural.

Later, when the Old English endings were mostly lost, the majority of these neuter nouns acquired 'regular' plural endings in -n, eventually superseded by endings in -s: wīf, for instance, became wives in the plural. A few, however did not, and deer is one of these.

It is often remarked that all these nouns with invariant plurals denote animals, deer, sheep, fish, swine, which are either herded or hunted; and it has been suggested that both the 'mass noun' sense with herd animals and the custom of referring to all hunted animals in the singular (we hunt bear, lion, and elephant as well as deer) helped inhibit plural regularization.

ADDED: See the second edition (1954) of Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part II SYNTAX (First Volume), Ch.III The Unchanged Plural (pp. 49–69), especially 3.1–3.2 and 3.71.

StoneyB on hiatus
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    +1 deers is still noted in OED as an occasional plural the most recent (in the 2nd Ed.) dated at 1817. – Frank Aug 03 '14 at 19:52
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    does deers have the same meaning as fishes, e.g. multiple different species of deer? – KutuluMike Aug 03 '14 at 23:46
  • @MichaelEdenfield The 'occasional' plurals with -s noted by OED are ordinary plural uses. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 03 '14 at 23:54
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    @MichaelEdenfield: (1) To my mind, yes: Deers can be used to mean kinds of deer (members of the deer family). I would have no hesitation in saying "Alces alces and Cervus canadensis are deers." (2) I'm no authority. – Drew Aug 04 '14 at 02:22
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    Is French influence the reason why plural in -s superseded plurals in -n? – Pierre Arlaud Aug 04 '14 at 08:31
  • seeing as in Germanic languages like Dutch and German the word Hert (Dutch) or Hirsch (German) have a plural, and the English Deer would be somehow derived from a common ancestor of those, it's quite likely there'd be a plural form in the proto-Germanic form. – jwenting Aug 04 '14 at 09:39
  • @ArlaudPierre No, the plural in -s derives from NOM/ACC PL -as in the most common OE declension. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 04 '14 at 10:28
  • @jwenting Deer is actually cognate with ModGer Tier and ModDu dier. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 04 '14 at 10:33
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    @StoneyB but what about 'sleeping with the fishes'? It's clearly the fishes and not the fish ;) – user1914292 Apr 24 '15 at 14:06
  • @user1914292 Note that the phrase derives from the film of the Godfather. It is spoken by Peter Clemenza and is supposed to represent a literal translation from his native Sicilian Italian. – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 24 '15 at 16:23
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    "it has been suggested" by whom? Could we have a citation? – Kaia Leahy Mar 27 '17 at 03:12
  • @sethrin See my addition. This was pretty much standard doctrine when I took HEL back in the 60s, and nobody seems much interested any more—diachronic studies have lost their prestige. I give a citation to Jespersen, which had the same sort of status then as CGEL today. – StoneyB on hiatus May 29 '17 at 14:26
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A good answer of StoneyB. I can only add that the lack of distinction between plural and singular forms of some old nouns (which logically must have this distinction) exists in many languages and can be traced back to the ancient state of the language, where the same word was used to describe both the class of elements and one particular element. For example, such a peculiarity still can be found in Korean or Chinese - you usually don't bother about plural ending, unless you want to emphasize the plurality.

K. Karavaj
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  • Just what is the plural ending for Chinese? There isn't any as far as I am aware of except for people. – user21820 Apr 24 '15 at 06:15
  • @user21820 Oh, you are quite right, I put it in rather an awkward way about Chinese. Whilst Koreans can stress plurality by a lot of special means (the simplest one is just adding plural ending ~tŭl), the Chinese can do that only by using context words - three deer, a few deer, a lot of deer. – K. Karavaj May 10 '15 at 11:49
  • Yup. Or for some single words, doubling is allowed, like 人人 or 星星 or 天天日日. – user21820 May 10 '15 at 12:29