The Grammar of English Grammars, page 580 by Gould Brown
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or very age."--Hope of Israel, p. 16. "To distinguish between the two staffs."--_Comstock's Elocution_, p. 43. In one instance, I observe, a very excellent scholar has written selfs for selves, but the latter is the established plural of _self_:
"Self-love would cease, or be dilated, when We should behold as many selfs as men."_--Waller's Poems_, p. 55.
OBS. 19.--Of nouns purely English, the following thirteen are the only simple words that form distinct plurals not ending in s or es, and four of these are often regular: _man, men; woman, women; child, children; brother, brethren_ or _brothers; ox, oxen; goose, geese; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; louse, lice; mouse, mice; die, dice_ or _dies; penny, pence_ or _pennies; pea, pease_ or peas. The word brethren is now applied only to fellow-members of the same church or fraternity; for sons of the same parents we always use _brothers_; and this form is sometimes employed in the other sense. Dice are spotted cubes for gaming; dies are stamps for coining money, or for impressing metals. Pence, as six pence, refers to the amount of money in value; pennies denotes the corns themselves. "We write peas, for two or more individual seeds; but pease, for an indefinite number in quantity or bulk."_--Webster's Dict._ This last anomaly, I think, might well enough "be spared; the sound of the word being the same, and the distinction to the eye not always regarded." Why is it not as proper, to write an order for "a bushel of peas," as for "a bushel of _beans_?" "Peas and beans may be severed from the ground before they be quite dry."_--Cobbett's E. Gram._, ¶ 31.
OBS. 20.--When a compound, ending with any of the foregoing irregular words, is made plural, it follows the fashion of the word with which it ends: as, _Gentleman, gentlemen; bondwoman, bondwomen; foster-child, foster-children; sola