Add S To Change Meaning

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan and today I want to talk about word that change meaning when you add a letter S at the end.

So normally in English, we can add the letter S to the end of a word to make it plural, for example, apple apples. One apple. “I have an apple." Apples, “I have five apples.” So normally we add the S at the end to make a noun, a thing into plural, but there are some words that add an s at the end, and the meaning changes. So I want to talk about a couple of these today.

So the first one that I will talk about is a very common mix-up, a very common mistake for students. And it's the word glass and glasses. So glass, G L A S S, and then glasses. G L A S S E S. So the word glass that's singular, we talk about glass, and it means the material, the material. Windows are made of glass. It's a material, like wood or plastic or metal. Glass is the material that we use for windows. The same word glass is also for a drink container. You put some water in a glass. You can drink from a glass. When we make it plural, glasses, this word is used to talk about ey wear the things that you wear in front of your eyes to improve your vision, wearing glasses to read small text. She wears glasses when she drives her car. So glasses with the plural has a different meaning than glass as a singular.

Another common, confusing pair of words is with the word cloth, cloth, C L O T H. So a cloth with no S at the end is used to talk about the material. Again, similar to glass, we're talking about material. We're talking about fabric. His clothes are made of cloth. Cotton is a type of cloth. We've got different types of materials, like cotton and linen and silk. These are fabricrics, these are cloth materials. But if we add an S at the end, cloths, we use this to talk about small pieces of cloth material that we usually use for cleaning. So, for example, I used some cloths to clean my desk and my bedroom, so using cloths with an S at the end, these are countable nouns, countable nouns, cleaning materials, cloths. So they are countable. I have five cloths under my sink, and I use them for cleaning. but the cloth, the singular, with no S at the end that's talking about the fabric, the material, this is uncountable. So my shirt is made of cloth. I need a lot of cloth for fixing my bag. These are uncountable nouns, material words are used in an uncountable way. wood, plastic, metal, cloth, materials like this are uncountable.

The final example that I'll talk about today is spirit. Spirit is a word that means an energy, a feeling or attitude, an energy for doing an activity. So it's like similar to courage and energy and your attitude about doing an activity. This is the word, spirit. S P I R I T. If we add the S at the end: spirits. This word is commonly used to talk about alcoholic drinks. I have some spirits in the cupboard. I'll make you a cocktail. So talking about alcoholic drinks, we refer to the alcohol drinks in general, vodka, whiskey, gin, things like that, as spirits. This word spirits is also used as the word for ghosts, or supernatural beings, so could think about the house is haunted by spirits. I believe that there are ghosts in that house. So spirit singular is this feeling of energy and your attitude about doing something. He has a fantastic spirit. He has strong spirit. And spirits with the plural with the S is alcoholic drinks and ghosts. So it's a very different meaning.

So in English we have some of these words where the meaning is quite drastically different when we add the s to the end of the word. So, as always, I've got a full blog post on the website if you want to learn more about these words and some other examples. That's on goldforestacademy.com. And for today's podcast, I think that is going to be it. Thank you very much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.