Episode

A brief history of plural word...s - John McWhorter

Podcast
TED-Ed
Published
Jul 25, 2026
Duration seconds
371
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG5723544644.mp3
Audio
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG5723544644.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/ted-ed-7859430/episodes/a-brief-history-of-plural-word-s-john-mcwhorter
Markdown
/podcast/ted-ed-7859430/a-brief-history-of-plural-word-s-john-mcwhorter.md

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Summary

View full lesson here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-plural-word-s-john-mcwhorterAll it takes is a simple S to make most English words plural. But it hasn't always worked that way (and there are, of course, exceptions). John McWhorter looks back to the good old days when English was newly split from German -- and books, names and eggs were beek, namen and eggru!Lesson by John McWhorter, animation by Lippy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices