hat even the best
scholars seem to have frequently doubted which termination they ought to
regard as the _regular_ one. The whole class includes more than one hundred
words. Some, however, are seldom used in the plural; and others, never.
_Wo_ and _potato_ are sometimes written _woe_ and _potatoe_. This may have
sprung from a notion, that such as have the _e_ in the plural, should have
it also in the singular. But this principle has never been carried out;
and, being repugnant to derivation, it probably never will be. The only
English appellatives that are established in _oe_, are the following
fourteen: seven monosyllables, _doe, foe, roe, shoe, sloe, soe, toe_; and
seven longer words, _rockdoe, aloe, felloe, canoe, misletoe, tiptoe,
diploe_. The last is pronounced _dip'-lo-e_ by Worcester; but Webster,
Bolles, and some others, give it as a word of two syllables only.[142]

OBS. 9.--Established exceptions ought to be enumerated and treated as
exceptions; but it is impossible to remember how to write some scores of
words, so nearly alike as _fumadoes_ and _grenados, stilettoes_ and
_palmettos_, if they are allowed to differ in termination, as these
examples do in Johnson's Dictionary. Nay, for lack of a rule to guide his
pen, even Johnson himself could not remember the orthography of the common
word _mangoes_ well enough to _copy_ it twice without inconsistency. This
may be seen by his example from King, under the words _mango_ and
_potargo_. Since, therefore, either termination is preferable to the
uncertainty which must attend a division of this class of words between the
two; and since _es_ has some claim to the preference, as being a better
index to the sound; I shall make no exceptions to the principle, that
common nouns ending in _o_ preceded by a consonant take _es_ for the
plural. Murray says, "_Nouns which_ end in _o_ have sometimes _es_ added,
to form the plural; as, cargo, echo, hero, negro, manifesto, potato,
volcano, wo: and sometimes only _s_; as, folio, nuncio, punctilio,
seraglio."--_Octavo Gram._, p. 40. This amounts to nothing, unless it is to
be inferred from his _examples_, that others like them in form are to take
_s_ or _es_ accordingly; and this is what I teach, though it cannot be said
that Murray maintains the principle.

OBS. 10.--Proper names of _individuals_, strictly used as such, have no
plural. But when several persons of the same name are spoken of, the noun
becomes in some degree commo