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What is the plural of iPod Touch? Should it be iPods Touch or iPod Touches?

tojofo
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5 Answers5

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Consider the following widely-accepted plural forms of popular Apple products whose names consist of two nouns:

  • Macbook Pros
  • iPod Shuffles
  • iPhone 4s
  • Mac Minis
  • Macbook Airs

Just as one wouldn't say Macbooks Pro, so also one shouldn't say iPods Touch. I would always go with iPod Touches. If that sounds awkward to you, then your better bet would be iPod Touch devices or, best, iPods. Most of the iPods being sold these days are of the Touch variety, anyway. More often than not, one will hear iPod Classic when the distinction wants to be made. Thus, an iPod will usually be an iPod Touch.

Also consider Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. One hears Xbox 360s (not Xboxes 360) and Playstation 3s/PS3s (not Playstations 3). Many technical writers use the words units and devices, or find other means to avoid these potentially sticky "plural" situations altogether.

Jimi Oke
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  • It's improper to pluralize words with an apostrophe. iPhone 4s, Playstation 3s. – Eric Dec 22 '10 at 09:07
  • @Eric: I’ve seen several people on this site assert that it’s always incorrect to pluralise with an apostrophe; are you sure that’s correct? I don’t have a copy of Fowler or similar to hand at the moment, but I seem to remember it saying that apostrophes were correct for pluralising some things: notably, foreign words that are not yet naturalised, and numbers. As: “1,000’s of negligée’s in the 1960’s”. (Negligée should be in italics there, but apparently you can’t italicise just part of a word in comments.) And I think apostrophes were to be used for some proper nouns as well. – PLL Dec 22 '10 at 16:36
  • @PLL: I'm not 100% correct it turns out, but I'm correct about the numbers pluralized here. This is a helpful webpage: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/1/ – Eric Dec 22 '10 at 16:56
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    @PLL: I certainly use apostrophes when pluralizing quoted or italicized words. Back in the day, I'm fairly certain, for instance, that 60's was more common than 60s. But I guess I belong to a school of ancient or erroneous thought. In the examples in my answer, though, I agree with @Eric that the apostrophes should not be there. Old habits die hard! – Jimi Oke Dec 22 '10 at 17:15
  • The only thing that is pluralized with ’s is single letters, as in “mind your P’s and Q’s” or “I got all A’s and no B’s on my report card”. “Dot your I’s and cross your T’s” – nohat Dec 22 '10 at 18:43
  • @nohat: Don't quite agree with your example: it's only lowercase letters that take an apostrophe in the plural. (See Eric's link.) I've had my fill of apostrohes for today, having just come back from a shop that was advertising box's and brush's for sale... :-( – Brian Nixon Dec 22 '10 at 21:53
  • @Jimi Oke, thanks that's an excellent example of why it should be touches. – tojofo Dec 22 '10 at 22:05
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    @Brian so you would write “I got all As”? Or, “As As are before Is, what comes before Is is As”? – nohat Dec 22 '10 at 22:52
  • @nohat: Hilarious example! In such a case, the apostrophes would definitely come in handy. My dictionary says both forms are correct, so I guess it would boil down to a matter of stylistic preference and contextual constraint. – Jimi Oke Dec 22 '10 at 22:59
  • @tojofo: You're most welcome. – Jimi Oke Dec 22 '10 at 22:59
  • @nohat: Touché; no, I doubt I would write that. In fact, having now taken the time actually to copy out your examples and remove the apostrophes, I doubt I'd change any of them. I might go with "Ps and Qs", though I'm not even convinced of that. Of course with "As" and "Is" being words, you really do need the apostrophes for clarity. Just goes to show I shouldn't believe everything I read on the Internet... (Also, apologies for the spelling mistake in the earlier comment. Too late to edit, and deleting the whole thing would leave the follow-ups looking out of place.) – Brian Nixon Dec 22 '10 at 23:23
  • Straying OT here, but there is one non-single-letter word that needs to be pluralised with ’s: “do”, as in “do’s and don’ts”. – Brian Nixon Dec 23 '10 at 01:57
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    @Brian Nixon: not always. Both dos and do's are correct. For dos and don'ts, the British are more likely to write do's, while in the US, it's chiefly dos! – Jimi Oke Dec 23 '10 at 04:10
  • FWIW, i say MacBooks Pro. I think it makes me sound classy. – Tom Anderson Apr 07 '12 at 17:52
  • Apple has decided to buck their own pattern here with Airpods Pro. https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/ – Doug Aug 31 '21 at 04:42
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According to this Apple support document, they refer to iPod Touches

Removing all your MobileMe Sync Data will remove the data from MobileMe Calendar, MobileMe Contacts, and from any iPhones or iPod touches you are synchronizing via MobileMe over-the-air syncing.

John Satta
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  • Thanks John, I'd have accepted this as an answer as well but I liked @Jimi's elaboration. – tojofo Dec 22 '10 at 22:06
  • No worries, in retrospect, perhaps I should have made this a comment to Jimi's answer, so he could have incorporated it directly - live and learn :-) – John Satta Dec 22 '10 at 22:40
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iPod Touches, which matches the plural of the computer mouse, "mouses."

brainysmurf
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There's the RIGHT answer, and the right answer.

In English, the rule is generally (adjective) (noun), as in blue car, hot soup, and beautiful sunset. Occasionally, this rule is subverted, as in this case, wherein the noun is IPod and the adjective is Touch. In English, when you pluralize you pluralize the noun, so the correct answer is "Ipods Touch".

Having said that, you'll sound like a pretentious ass. One wouldn't go to Burger King and order two Whoppers Junior. So the accepted plural is IPod Touches, even though you're pluralizing the adjective.

Chris B. Behrens
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  • But "touch" is a verb or a noun. – Kosmonaut Dec 22 '10 at 15:20
  • Not in this case. It refers to the model of IPod. In this case, "touch" is an adjective. – Chris B. Behrens Dec 22 '10 at 15:46
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    Sorry, but it is part of a compound noun: "iPod Touch". This is similar to the way that, in e.g. "bridge crossing", the word "bridge" is not an adjective — it is still a noun. On top of that, because you don't pluralize adjectives in English, you have direct evidence that "touch" is not being used as an adjective. – Kosmonaut Dec 22 '10 at 16:44
  • @Chris B. Behrens: On careful analysis, you will see that Touch here is a noun. One could very well say: "I can't find my Touch!" or "I love my Touch." Back in the day when not all TV screens where flat, someone could very well ask you, "What sort of TV do you have?" and you could answer, "It's a flat. A true flat!" There, "flat" is certainly a noun. Also, in "Mac Mini", "Mini" is definitely a noun. On way to help parse this is to check if you can use an article with each element in the compound noun ("a mac"/"a mini"; "an iPod"/"a Touch"), without losing the general meaning of the compound. – Jimi Oke Dec 22 '10 at 17:50
  • Well, I won't embarrass myself by arguing grammar with a linguist much further, but take the Onion article I linked to there...isn't "Junior" clearly an adjective? And in the case of IPod Touch, isn't "Touch" modifying "IPod", distinguishing it from, for example, an IPod Nano? If we substituted "Deluxe" for "Touch", would that still be characterized as a compound noun? – Chris B. Behrens Dec 22 '10 at 22:11
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    @Chris B. Behrens: Sorry, I think Williams Safire was trying to prove a moot point. Honestly, when it comes to proprietary names, it's best to treat them as compound nouns. I could easily say, "I want two Juniors". But maybe Safire was right and Burger King really named "Whooper Junior" with "Junior" there as an adjective. I would argue, though, that "Touch" does not modify "iPod". It distinguishes but doesn't modify. It's simply the name. Consider: "It's an Acura." "What model?" "It's a Legend." "Wow, an Acura Legend!" "Legend" doesn't modify "Acura". It's simply the name! – Jimi Oke Dec 23 '10 at 01:04
  • Last bit - the William Safire thing is actually a joke on William Safire, that he would be so pedantic as to correct someone's grammar at a Burger King. – Chris B. Behrens Dec 23 '10 at 15:36
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    Chris, you are absolutely right: 'Touch' here is a postpositive adjective, so the plural suffix attaches to the noun it modifies, and don't let anyone tell you any different. – Tom Anderson Apr 07 '12 at 17:51
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I think "iPod Touch devices" or "Touch iPods" sounds a bit better.

apaderno
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dassouki
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  • I would never use the phrase "Touch iPods" — that's simply incorrect. There's no such thing as a Touch iPod, just as there's no such thing as an Air MacBook, or a Windows by Microsoft operating system. – ghoppe Nov 20 '11 at 20:32