Talk:mails

See Special:PermanentLink/24549050#mails. DCDuring TALK 23:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Tea room.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

mails

"the mails". I have inserted the noun sense into this entry as US, meaning the postal delivery system. Is it really just US? Does it refer to more than the system. The etymology (not yet present) refers to "bags". Is "the mails" short for "the mail bags"? DCDuring TALK 21:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not just the system, but also the actual mail that passes through the system. I don't see any reason to infer a "bags"; there are plenty of nouns that double as uncountable and as definite pluralia tantum, such as (deprecated template usage) water/the waters, (deprecated template usage) steppe/the steppes (I think?), (deprecated template usage) Heaven/the Heavens, and (deprecated template usage) forest/the forests. (None of those is a perfect example, since in each case a normal countable use is available as well, but hopefully you see what I'm trying to say.) Unless there's a reputable source that asserts an implied "bags", I think it makes more sense to assume that the word used to be more regularly countable than it is now, and its singular and plural forms simply both fossilized into slightly different frames. —Ruakh_TALK 23:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)