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When referring to Congress do I refer to it as a single body or a collective? For example, is it

Congress is stupid.

or

Congress are stupid.

Cirtus
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    This differs between U.K. English and U.S. English. In England, Parliament are stupid. In the U.S., Congress is stupid. Related question here. – Peter Shor Jul 28 '11 at 21:56
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    Related: Is a company always plural, or are small companies singular? The most voted answer gives the answer for collective nouns. – apaderno Jul 28 '11 at 21:58
  • Mmmm this is more interesting than I thought. So are both right dependent on context? – Cirtus Jul 28 '11 at 22:09
  • I think it's more a question of saying that in some constructions, and in some parts of the world, you can get away with the plural. But if you're not sure, stick with the singular and probably no-one will ever find fault with your usage. – FumbleFingers Jul 28 '11 at 22:25
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    Also, in the US, isn't it supposed to be 'The Congress is stupid'? – Mitch Jul 28 '11 at 22:57
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    @Peter Shor: I keep seeing this claim made about UK English in this context. In the UK Parliament are or is stupid. Both are used, with a slight difference in meaning which I have found it difficult to capture precisely. In general the plural is more common I think, but not exclusive. As it happens I think that "Parliament is" is more likely than "Parliament are", though I'm not sure why. – Colin Fine Jul 29 '11 at 13:43
  • Actually, for "parliament" it seems to be more clear cut than I thought. The British National Corpus does not contain one single instance of "parliament are" where "parliament" is the subject of the verb. (There are 49 instances of the phrase, but the subject is always the members/houses/acts etc of parliament.) In contrast, a small number of the 187 instances of "parliament is" actually have "parliament" as the subject. (A rather larger number have "a parliament" or "the XX parliament" as the subject) – Colin Fine Jul 29 '11 at 13:55
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    Slightly to my surprise, the same pattern appears for "House of Commons": the BNC has 15 'is' to 0 'are' in the relevant senses. For "government", the BNC has 1501 "government is" to 445 "government are". Both of these clearly include plenty of examples which are not relevant, but a quick scan suggests to me that the singular verb is still several times more common than the plural in that corpus. – Colin Fine Jul 29 '11 at 14:02
  • Possible duplicate of Are collective nouns always plural, or are certain ones singular? – marcellothearcane Aug 06 '17 at 18:13

1 Answers1

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In American English, Congress is a collective noun. So, you have the Congress, the Senate, the United States of America. For your particular sentence, you would write:

Congress is __.

Depending on where the OP is from, there are different uses in British English (thank you @FumbleFingers)

  • There is something of a US/UK divide here (we Brits usually speak of what Microsoft are doing, where Americans usually say is). But even allowing for that, usage isn't as clear-cut as you imply. Consider this usage of ...Congress are to go in a body..., which certainly sounds fine to my (British) ear. – FumbleFingers Jul 28 '11 at 21:56
  • @Fumble: I added your comments. I didn't realize that, thank you. –  Jul 28 '11 at 22:03
  • Ah. I am from Britain. For some reason saying Congress are feels right. While congress is seems more common. – Cirtus Jul 28 '11 at 22:07
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    @Cirtus: With this particular one I think I chop and change according to context. Despite my example superficially suggesting singular ("in a body"), it actually calls to mind that there are many Congressmen involved, which I think is why I'm fine with "are" there. Note - GoogleBooks finds 4600 written occurences of "Congress has voted", against 716 for "Congress have voted", so it's a strong but certainly not overwhelming tendency. – FumbleFingers Jul 28 '11 at 22:22
  • US usage is definitely "is", not "are". – sibbaldiopsis Jul 28 '11 at 23:54