#958 What It’s Not

People from foreign lands often have a hard time learning the quirks of the English language. And nowhere is that more evident than in our use of plural nouns.
It’s pretty easy to pick out a non-native speaker when he says things like “I went out and saw the deers in the forest. Deers and fishes always throw them.
Some words are even harder. Like “the blues.” Looks and sounds like an ordinary plural. Even has an ‘s’ on the end. But no one ever has one blue. “Hey Fred, you look a little unhappy.” “Yep, I’m feeling a blue today.”
Some plural nouns just can’t be made singular. But some people try. It might be one of those regional things. The other day I read something by an eastern writer. He was reporting how cold it was, so cold that someone had a snot on the end of his nose.
That’s right, a snot. As in a singular glob of some sort. I know what he’s talking about. I’ve seen it. Especially after a person has exercised a lot of exertion, like running a marathon or shoveling a sidewalk. But I’ve never called it a snot. I’ve called it a wad of snot or a glob of snot.
An undried booger.
Booger can be singular, or you can have a whole group of boogers. But snot is not singular, it’s a plural form. Like mucus. You don’t have a mucus on the end of your nose.
Or sleep. You have sleep in the corners of your eyes when you wake up in the morning that the sandman left. In the daytime, it’s a scrode. As in, “Hey dude, you got a scrode in your eye and it’s grossing me out.”
Or spit. It always has to be at least some spit. Spit filled his mouth. He spat out some spit. Saliva, as well—another bodily fluid that you can measure but has no singular unit you can refer to with a singular indefinite article.
A fingernail. A booger. A scab. Some saliva and some spit.
Or some mucus.
So when it comes to making it singular, it may seem like a wet booger, but it’s not.
America, ya gotta love it.