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I've recently read a blurb from a local paper that included the following:

The pair was drinking prior to the shooting.

To me, this appears wrong and I would say that the proper way to make the statement would be:

The pair were drinking prior to the shooting.

Is the original article correct?

herisson
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4 Answers4

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It's really just a matter of style.

Here's an NGram showing that both forms occur about as often. More recent prescriptive grammarians tend to say that a pair must be singular, but that's not going to stop half the English-speaking world from continuing with what was originally the much more common pluralised usage.

The most sensible way to approach this one is to assume both forms are valid. If the usage primarily deals with the pair as a unit, go for the singular. I don't find it easy to visualise a pair drinking together as anything other than two actual people, so in OP's example I would use the plural without hesitation.

By way of support for that last sentence, there aren't enough written instances in Google Books to compare usage for "pair ... drinking", but compare the 4,990 results for "pair were sitting" against 417 for "pair was sitting". The "guesstimate" figures aren't exactly true - when I page through them, GB admits the plural version has only 320 hits. But the singular really has only 79, which is still more than 4:1 in favour of using the plural if the verb implies each individual member of the pair doing something (particularly, people), as would be the case with, say, drinking.

FumbleFingers
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  • Interesting +1 for the ngram – Unreason Jun 27 '11 at 18:44
  • @Unreason: If you look at the actual instances, you'll see that quite a few are irrelevant to us here. But it seems to me that applies about equally to both forms, so the underlying message remains valid. – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '11 at 18:46
  • One of the pair was, the two in the other pair were. I don't know we can give much stock to this Ngram search. Is there a way to filter out results with a preceding of? Sorry fumble--I want to believe, help me in my disbelief!! :-) – NateMPLS Jun 27 '11 at 19:21
  • @NateMPLS: As I said, a goodly proportion of those NGram hits are irrelevant to our question. I just glanced at a few dozen of each, and got the impression there were plenty of relevant instances for both singular and plural forms. I personally don't find either 'jarring' in appropriate sentences, and I put little stock in 'rules' of grammar or logic on this issue. But I am interested in what people say/write, as I assume is OP. So let's dig a little deeper, maybe? – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '11 at 20:16
  • @NateMPLS: See my comment on drm65's answer - I went through the entries in COCA for "pair was" and "pair were" and eliminated the false positives. As FumbleFingers says, this doesn't massively affect the results, which show that both "was" and "were" are very common :) – psmears Jun 27 '11 at 22:28
  • @psmears: Thanks for doing the spadework! I see little evidence of a US/UK divide, though. I think you have better tools, so can you settle that too? – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '11 at 23:51
  • Can 'pair' in the singular be treated as plural even when it means a pair of inanimate objects? For example, does this work? A: I'm looking for a pair of socks. B: A pair are over here. – JK2 Dec 08 '17 at 06:21
  • @JK2: I can't easily imagine a native speaker coming out with B's response in your example (usually we'd say *There's a pair over here, but the plurality of there is/there are* is a whole nother ball game anyway). But I see nothing unusual about You really should change your socks! Here - this pair are* clean. And to my ear that would be just as (syntactically, if not socially! :) acceptable with, say, underpants* instead of *socks*. – FumbleFingers Dec 08 '17 at 14:32
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Important message: I've just edited this question, so it now advocates a (hopefully) much more correct view. It has 4 downvotes from my saying that pair was is the only correct way to say it (which I did believe 9 months ago). I am sincerely regretful for having misled the OP (and anyone else to whom this applies) with not much chance of his seeing my correction.

From a prescriptive point of view, since pair is a singular noun, referring to two things (while pairs is the plural form of that noun), pair was is the correct way to say it:

Hence:

A pair was...

Two pairs were...

The article is therefore grammatically correct.

However, since the world is not composed of pedants, your proposition (the pair were...) is no less correct. Due to a grammatical phenomenon called synesis, pair and other collective nouns can be treated as plural, taking a plural verb:

Synesis is a traditional grammatical/rhetorical term derived from Greek σύνεσις (originally meaning "unification, meeting, sense, conscience, insight, realization, mind, reason"). A constructio kata synesin (or constructio ad sensum in Latin) means a grammatical construction in which a word takes the gender or number not of the word with which it should regularly agree, but of some other word implied in that word. It is effectively an agreement of words with the sense, instead of the morphosyntactic form.

Example:

  • If the band are popular, they will play next month.

Here, the plural pronoun they co-refers with the singular noun band. One can think of the antecedent of they as an implied plural noun such as musicians.

I won't quote more, since I included the link, but it's well worth looking at.

The moral of this story is that either way is grammatically correct, and the difference is a matter of style.

Daniel
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  • Thanks for clearing that up. I only called it into question because believe it or not, Websters gives an example of using "pair" in reference to a married couple and uses "were" combined with it. Assuming I could trust Websters, I erroneously argued with the publishers of the article and now look like a total moron. lol thanks again. –  Jun 27 '11 at 18:40
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    Is this another case where American and British usage differ? – Peter Shor Jun 27 '11 at 19:19
  • Yes, "pair were" is correct in British English as I understand. (I am American, but living in the UK.) It's the same reason the British say "Chelsea were victorious today in the football match" not "Chelsea was victorious..." – Sean Owen Jun 27 '11 at 20:38
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    Actually the Corpus of Contemporary American English reports that "pair were" is alive and well in the US: 95/71 for "was"/"were" respectively. And eliminating irrelevant entries (e.g. this coin and the Smithsonian's pair were; if the pair were competing; a newly hired au pair was scheduled to...; and especially one of each pair was...) "pair were" wins by 62-55. So Webster's is right, and "pair were" is entirely correct in both US and UK English (which is not saying that "pair was" is ever incorrect, especially in examples like "pair of scissors"!) – psmears Jun 27 '11 at 22:24
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    Okay - I've reversed my downvote here too! I think I probably only answered myself because I didn't agree with your original position, but I'm minded to add a bit to my answer to support my assertion that in OP's specific example the plural form really is preferred. – FumbleFingers Mar 16 '12 at 20:52
  • @FumbleFingers To me as an American, things like pair and couple (referring to people) seem like natural duals, and so merit plural concordance. “The couple were both dressed impeccably.” I can’t imagine that in the singular. I don’t use plurals for sports teams, although I often do so for corporations. The really weird one is that pair itself can be used as a counted plural, like “I’d like three pair, please.” – where you would have expected pairs instead. German contamination? – tchrist Mar 17 '12 at 01:04
  • @tchrist: The couple both dressed impeccably would have to be pluralised because of the word both, but you're right. Thinking about it, it seems when the pair is two people they're usually plural. It does exist, but the pair gets married certainly grates on me. I think most of the people who say that are just running scared of the grammar police! Not actually pluralising the noun itself is common in many dialects I think. Esp. in the context of playing poker - my straight beats your two pair, etc. – FumbleFingers Mar 17 '12 at 02:32
  • @FumbleFingers So "The married couple arrive at their destination" is correct, "The married couple arrives at its destination" is wrong? What about "my family go/goes on vacation"? – painfulenglish Feb 17 '19 at 09:05
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    @painfulenglish: I don't think "correct" is really the relevant term here. Probably because I'm a Brit, I'm relatively flexible about the plurality of nouns like family, company, government. To my mind, it's perfectly natural to treat them as singular or plural according to exact context and/or intended nuance, but that's not necessarily how some "prescriptive grammarians" as referred to in my own answer here see things. But I very rarely find it "natural" to treat pair or couple (of people) as singular, and in my experience it's more often Americans who stick to that line. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '19 at 15:01
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The two African American children are brother and sister. The next pair is also siblings, but Caucasian and has different ages. The makes no sense

The next pair are also siblings, but Caucasian, and have different ages. This seems grammatically correct

Prof. Challenge
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American English seems to favor these “group” terms as singular, so you see “the pair is” or “the family is” more often, whilst in England you are more likely to hear or see “the pair were” or “the family were.” I am not saying I’m right, it’s just been my observation.

Karenita
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  • Hi and welcome to ELU, can you find some supporting evidence to validate your experience? I don't doubt that you're correct, it's just what we tend to prefer from answers on this site. – David M Oct 27 '19 at 19:29
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    In my experience, synesis rather than 'always plural verbform' is the norm in the UK. 'The team were arguing among themselves' but 'The team was founded in 1887'. But I'd agree 'was' is more likely in the US (and certainly in Australia) even when team members are in mind. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 20 '20 at 11:50