英语与汉语分属两个不同的语言体系，这种区别虽然给英语学习增添了一些难度，却也为它带来了不少乐趣。

　　今天为大家整理了一些只能用作复数的单词，背后的故事也惊喜多多，一起来学习吧。

　　Trousers

　　裤子

　　Looking back, to around the 16th century, there was once a singular trouser – or, rather, a singular trouse; the –er form was always plural and may have been modelled on ‘drawers’. You might expect trouse to have originally designated a single leg, in much the manner of sleeve, but this is not the case. A trouse was not a world away from modern day trousers. But at the same time, trouses was used in its plural form for the same object.

　　回首过去，在大约16世纪，人们也曾使用过它的单数形式trouser，那时候也写作trouse。以-er结尾的名词通常都用复数形式，这可能是受到drawer(抽屉)的影响。你可能会以为裤子一开始只有一条裤腿，就像sleeve(袖子)一样，但事实却不是这样。以前的trouse和我们今天的裤子其实也没有什么大不同，都是“紧包臀部和腿部的服装，一直延伸到袜子处”。复数形式的trousers其实也是指的同一事物。

　　还有一些表示衣物的词语，它们也经常以复数形式出现，如pants、shorts(短裤)、 leggings(紧身裤)、jeans、flares(喇叭裤)、tights(连裤袜/紧身裤)、 overalls(工装裤)、dungarees(背带裤) 等。

　　Scissors

　　剪刀

　　The word scissors dates back to the 15th century, and in its first-known uses appeared either as singular or plural. The latter quickly overtook the former in popularity, and today you are only likely to encounter the singular scissor as a verb or used attributively to form a compound noun such as scissor kick.

　　Scissor这个单词可以追溯到15世纪，一开始它的单复数形式都被人们拿来使用。但后者很快赢得更多的人气，并取代了前者。今天，只有在scissor作为动词或者作为修饰词来构成复合名词时，如 scissor kick(飞踢), 才使用单数形式。

　　许多其他表示双刃工具的名词也使用复数形式，如pliers(钳子)，forceps(医用镊子)，shears(修剪花木的大剪刀)，tweezers(镊子)，tongs(烧瓶钳)。

　　Glasses

　　眼镜

　　Obviously the singular noun glass exists, but when referring to eyewear, you will only hear about glasses; even the fashion world doesn’t seem yet to have started recommending that people wear a chic glass. The same is true of binoculars, spectacles, and goggles.

　　很显然，glass作为单数名词确实存在，但涉及到眼镜时，你只会听到人们说glasses。甚至连时尚界人士在推荐眼镜时都不会用a chic(别致的) glass。同样情况的单词还有binoculars(双筒望远镜)、spectacles(眼镜)、和 goggles(护目镜)。

　　Clothes

　　衣服

　　Looking more broadly in the world of attire, we speak of clothes, but never of a single clothe (a word which exists only as a verb). Cloth exists as a singular noun, but meaning ‘woven or felted fabric, made from wool, cotton, or a similar fibre’, rather than ‘a garment’.

　　放眼服装界，我们通常都说clothes，而不是它的单数形式clothe(该词只在做动词时用单数)。Cloth作为单数名词，意为“编织或缩绒而成的织物，有羊毛、棉花或类似的纤维制成”，而不是“一件衣服”。

　　This was not always the case. In the late 14th century, cloth could be used to refer to a single garment, robe, or coat; this use is found in Piers Plowman, Wycliffe’s translation of the Psalms, and the works of Chaucer.

　　但情况并非总是如此。在14世纪末期，cloth意为一件衣服、长袍或大衣。这种用法可以在《农夫皮尔斯》、威克利夫的译作《诗篇》以及乔叟的作品中看到。

　　Thanks

　　谢谢

　　Although the verb thank is common, especially in the exclamation thank you, you wouldn’t give somebody a single thank – unless you happened to be in Ancient Britain and using the Old English thanc, from which the modern word stemmed. Again, the singular was dropped eventually – although examples are found as late as the 19th century.

　　虽然动词thank 非常普遍，尤其是用在感叹语thank you中。但是你不能使用它的单数名词形式，除非是在古代英国，古英语中用作thanc，然而它已从现代英语词汇中删除。虽然直到19世纪还有人使用它的名词单数形式，最终它还是被删除。

　　Folk

　　人们

　　Although there is also the option of folks (often seen in old folks’ home, for instance), folk is also itself exclusively a plural: in current English, you cannot have one folk. The word dates back to Old English, and is of Germanic origin.

　　虽然也可以加上-s，但folk本身就可以表示复数意义(如old folks’ home养老院)。在现代英语中，folk一般不表示单数意义。该词语始于古英语，从日耳曼英语演化而来。

　　amends

　　赔偿

　　You can make amends but you cannot make an amend; the latter now exists only as a verb. The noun amends comes from the Old French amendes meaning ‘penalties, fine’; in Old French, it was the plural of amende, but only the plural found its way into English.

　　你可以说make amends,却不能说make amend，因为后者现在只用作动词。名词amends源于古法语amende，意为“处罚，罚款”。在古法语中，amendes是amende的复数形式，但最终只有amendes被引进到英语中。

　　Marginalia

　　标注

　　Pluralia tantum don’t necessarily end in ‘s’, of course, particularly if they have kept their plural formation from another or an earlier language. Marginalia – ‘notes written in the margins of a text’ – comes from Latin, which also had the singular marginalis. The singular did not make its way into English, however, and thus marginalia joins the ranks of pluralia tantum.

　　经常以复数形式出现的名词并不代表着它们一定会以-s结尾，尤其是当它们的复数形式是源于外来语或者早期语言时。Marginalia意为“文章空白处所做的注释”，源自拉丁语。它的单数形式为marginalis，却并没有引入到英语中去。但是，marginalia则成为经常以复数形式出现的名词。

　　一起的拉丁引进词还有juvenilia(青少年创作的作品)和literati(对文学感兴趣的受过良好教育的人)。还有一些类似的词语(如paraphernalia{私人物品} 和regalia{特别物品})，虽是单数形式，却表复数意思。

　　Shenanigans

　　恶作剧

　　Pluralia tantum needn’t be tangible objects; shenanigans is commonly held to be an example. The word is of uncertain origin, and means ‘secret or dishonest activity or manoeuvring’ or ‘silly or high-spirited behaviour; mischief’. The singular shenanigan is not in common use, and is not included in OxfordDictionaries.com, but the history of shenanigans actually follows the same pattern as clothes, albeit over a shorter period.

　　经常以复数形式出现的名词并不都是那些有形物体。Shenanigans就是一个常见的例子。该词语来源尚未明确，意为“秘密进行的或欺骗性的活动、部署”，“愚蠢或兴致勃勃的行为”。单数形式的shenanigan并不常用，而且也未被收入牛津词典。但是Shenanigans一词的起源和clothes一样，都是只在一个较短的时期里被使用。

　　The earliest known example of the word is from an 1855 article in Town Talk: ‘Are you quite sure? No shenanigan?’. This usage is found in various sources, including the letters of Mark Twain, throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries; in recent years, it has fallen out of use almost completely.

　　最早发现这个单词是在1855年，刊登在Town Talk上的一篇文章中：”Are you quite sure? No shenanigan?”后来这个用法被普遍采用，包括19世纪末20世纪初的马克•吐温的信件中。然而近年来，人们已经不怎么使用了。

　　Loggerheads

　　笨蛋

　　The singular loggerhead exists in reference to a variety of turtle and a variety of shrike, and is an archaic term meaning ‘a foolish person’, but is nowadays most commonly met in the phrase at loggerheads. This means ‘in violent dispute or disagreement’, and is never found as at loggerhead. It has been suggested that this use of loggerheads relates to a late 17th-century sense of loggerhead meaning ‘long-handled iron instrument for heating liquids and tar’, when wielded as a weapon.

　　作为单数形式的loggerhead指的是多个种类的龟或者伯劳鸟，在旧式英语中则意为“愚蠢的人”。但现在最常见的是作为短语at loggerheads来使用。该短语意为“激烈争论或反对”，并且一般不用作at loggerhead。有人认为这种用法跟17世纪时的loggerhead有关系，它意为“一种长柄铁器，可以用来加热液体或焦油”，同时也可以作为武器。

　　Cahoots

　　同伙

　　Speaking of phrases, you’re unlikely to hear about cahoots outside of the informal phrase in cahoots (‘colluding or conspiring together secretly’), and you won’t discover a single cahoot in current English, although the word was once used that way. The etymology is uncertain, but a link has been suggested with the French cahute, meaning ‘hut, shack’.

　　提到短语，除了非正式的in cahoots(一起秘密勾结或谋划)，你可能不会碰到其他的相关短语。在现代英语中，也没有cahoots的单数形式，虽然它也曾被人们使用过。Cahoots一词的来源尚不明确，但人们认为它与法语词cahute 有关，该词意为“小屋，棚室”。

　　Smithereens

　　碎片，碎屑

　　Probably from the Irish smidirín, smithereens means ‘small pieces’ (almost invariably in the context of destruction; the table got smashed to smithereens, for example). Smithers is also used, but you will not find smither or smithereen in the singular – although the transitive verb smithereen (‘to smash or blow up into tiny fragments’) is included in the OED.

　　Smithereens一词可能与源自爱尔兰语smidirín，它意为“小片”(遭到毁坏，例如：the table got smashed to smithereens桌子被砸得粉碎)。Smithers虽然也被人们使用，但你不会看到人们用它的单数形式smither 和 smithereen，虽然smithereen作为及物动词(意为“打成或炸成碎片”)已被收入牛津词典。

　　这些永远复数的单词你都记住了吗?

（编辑：何莹莹）