580
sheaf, sheaves; leaf, leaves; loaf, loaves; leaf, beeves; thief, thieves; calf, calves; half, halves; elf, elves; shelf, shelves; self, selves; wolf, wolves_. Three others in fe are similar: _life, lives; knife, knives; wife, wives._ These are specific exceptions to the general rule for plurals, and not a series of examples coming under a particular rule; for, contrary to the instructions of nearly all our grammarians, there are more than twice as many words of the same endings, which take s only: as, _chiefs, kerchiefs, handkerchiefs, mischiefs, beliefs, misbeliefs, reliefs, bassreliefs, briefs, feifs, griefs, clefs, semibrefs, oafs, waifs, coifs, gulfs, hoofs, roofs, proofs, reproofs, woofs, califs, turfs, scarfs, dwarfs, wharfs, fifes, strifes, safes._ The plural of wharf is sometimes written _wharves_; but perhaps as frequently, and, if so, more accurately, wharfs. Examples and authorities: "_Wharf, wharfs_."--_Brightland's Gram._, p. 80; _Ward's_, 24; _Goar's_, 26; _Lennie's_, 7; _Bucke's_, 39. "There were not in London so many wharfs, or keys, for the landing of merchants' goods."--CHILD: _in Johnson's Dict._ "The wharfs of Boston are also worthy of notice."--_Balbi's Geog._, p. 37. "Between banks thickly clad with dwelling-houses, manufactories, and wharfs."_--London Morn. Chronicle_, 1833. Nouns in ff take s only; as, _skiffs, stuffs, gaffs_. But the plural of staff has hitherto been generally written _staves_; a puzzling and useless anomaly, both in form and sound: for all the compounds of staff are regular; as, _distaffs, whipstaffs, tipstaffs, flagstaffs, quarterstaffs_; and staves is the regular plural of stave, a word now in very common use with a different meaning, as every cooper and every musician knows. Staffs is now sometimes used; as, "I saw the husbandmen bending over their staffs."--Lord Carnarvon. "With their staffs in their hands f