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TEGULA http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... a?q=TEGULA is an established dictionary word with Latin background, and its plural is specified as -ae.

PAENULA http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... ?q=PAENULA is a new entry with Latin background, but has no specified plural (nor do any of these new ones). If I declared PAENULAS on the show would that word be disqualified? What if I declared PAENULAE?

Any guidance would be much appreciated!

I am pretty sure that PAENULAS would be accepted but PAENULAE would not.

Thanks - my thoughts too.

Would this pluralise in S or X?

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... h/traineau

And would this pluralise at all? http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... h/relaxion - see "=relaxation" which is a mass noun?

Similar: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... h/melitose

If the plural isn't specified, then you just apply normal English plural rules, as much as you may expect otherwise from the origin. So add S or ES, or -Y -> -IES.

If it points to a mass noun without being listed as a mass noun, I'd expect it to be disallowed, but it's a grey area. OPALINES iirc has usually been disallowed whereas VERONALS was suggested by DC last time it appeared. Tread with caution.

The guidelines that I'm using to determine which inflections go into the Apterous dictionary are as follows:

-Nouns take S, ES or IES according to standard spelling rules
-Verbs take an -S form, an -ED form and an -ING form according to standard spelling rules
-One-syllable unsuffixed adjectives take an -ER form and an -EST form according to standard spelling rules
-Compound or prefixed words like ENGINEMAN and REBEGIN are inflected according to their root
(so ENGINEMEN, REBEGAN and REBEGUN, not ENGINEMANS and REBEGINNED)
-Nouns which 'equal' an unpluralisable noun can't be pluralised (so no MELITOSES, RELAXIONS)
-Language of origin isn't taken into consideration, so no PAENULAE or TRAINEAUX
-Semantics isn't taken into consideration, so for the sake of consistency, sports and -ology words can be pluralised, and strange verb forms like GOINTERED would be allowed. Individual cases like these can always be removed later if they get disallowed on CD.

Of course, this is just for Apterous- there's no guarantee that this is how words would be adjudicated on the show.

Great post Rob

I agree with all of the above except that GOINTERED* isn't about semantics really; it's about possible grammar, and tenses. It's not about the meaning of the verb (the matter of going) but the actual tense that the word is in, and whether the tense that the inflection would put the verb into is possible. There's no such thing as a future-past tense (except from future perfect 'about to have gone', which this isn't).

Cheers I agree that GOINTERED, USETERING etc. are particularly exceptionable, and they probably shouldn't be in. It's just that such entries are extremely rare, and as a compiler, it's time-consuming to take into account any information that isn't immediately accessible from the part-of-speech label and the word itself.

Conor wrote:If the plural isn't specified, then you just apply normal English plural rules, as much as you may expect otherwise from the origin. So add S or ES, or -Y -> -IES.

If it points to a mass noun without being listed as a mass noun, I'd expect it to be disallowed, but it's a grey area. OPALINES iirc has usually been disallowed whereas VERONALS was suggested by DC last time it appeared. Tread with caution.

ADERMIN/S, ADERMINE/S fall foul of this. They would be SO USEFUL.