Rooves

[carrotsandpeasifyouplease]

Ok, we were playing a quiz and my mum says that the plural of roof is rooves, she is adament about this , could somebody please supply a correct reference to prove her right, she accepts it is an old fashioned way of spelling it but please prove us right

MUM YOU ARE WRONG

Does this help www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rooves

Definitely wrong.... roofs is the correct version.

God your name is terrible.

Although I never spell it 'rooves' that is how I pronounce it. Oh the embarrassment

Well she is still adament having read your posts, (thank you by the way) just one positive reference would make her christmas

Your mum is a lovely lady, really lovely, but she cannot spell roofs although she is a wonderful person (is that positive enough?)

I believe that in RP the word roof becomes ruff. The plural therefore becomes ruffs.

Oh btw your mum is wrong

Here we are then, just for mum

The thing is she is normally so correct when it comes to English.

Not this time.

she might like this list of other nouns whose plurals end in -ves

oh dear

anyway who needs more than one roof anyway....

I think it can be said like that, but definitely spelt roofs.

Adamant. You can both now admit to making a mistake. I would only point this out in Pedants' Corner

She can have hooves though

I was sur eI had heard rooves before so I googled it with Enid Blyton and find this thread first up

I also found this I'm beginning tot hink shes not mad. I'm going to keep looking

I'm beginning to think she's not wrong but somewhat oldfashioned more stuff I'm not a pedant though.

Ok I'll stop now

You have made my mums day thank you mediocre, she doesn't mind being old fashioned just right

In the 1958 I remember having an essay marked with a big red line through roofs as the English dictionarys at the time started put roofs as the alternative to rooves for the plural roof. It seems today all dictionarys have droped rooves and only have the plural as roofs yet keep hoofs and hooves ...although in that essay I spelt it as roofs I have always said rooves .. I am told English is evolving .

My goodness, you must be a real pedant to search out posts that are almost a year old!

LOLOLOL!

and dictionaries!

The New Fowler's Modern English Usage: 'The standard pl. form in BrE is roofs, but the minority form rooves seems to be gaining ground... It is a classic example of a disputed plural'.

Looks like your mum is ahead of her time, not old-fashioned.