plurally


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Related to plurally: pluralisation

plu·ral

 (plo͝or′əl)
adj.
1. Relating to or composed of more than one member, set, or kind: the plural meanings of a text; a plural society.
2. Grammar Of or being a grammatical form that designates more than one of the things specified.
n. Grammar
1. The plural number or form.
2. A word or term in the plural form.

[Middle English plurel, from Old French, from Latin plūrālis, from plūs, plūr-, more; see pelə- in Indo-European roots.]

plu′ral·ly adv.
Our Living Language In English, plurals of nouns are normally indicated by the ending -s or -es, or in a few cases by -en, as in children and oxen. Some vernacular varieties of English do not use plural endings in measurement phrases such as three mile and ten pound. This zero plural has a long history and was not formerly as socially stigmatized as it is today. It appears in literary works dating from the Middle English period to the present day, including works of dialect writers, such as this example from Mark Twain's Huck Finn: "The nearest white settlement warnt nearer nor four mile." · In adjectival constructions even Standard English has no -s plural: a five-pound box of candy is acceptable, whereas a five-pounds box is not. These adjective phrases derive from an -a suffix in Old English that marked plural adjectives. This ending has long since fallen away, leaving behind the unmarked root forms. · The absence of -s in the plural form of animal names (hunting for bear, a herd of buffalo) probably arose by analogy with animals like deer and sheep whose plurals have been unmarked since the earliest beginnings of the English language. See Note at foot
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

plu•ral•ly

(ˈplʊər ə li)

adv.
as a plural; in a plural sense.
[1350–1400]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in classic literature ?
The latter had only one side, and therefore -- plurally and pedantically speaking -- NO SIDES.
(14) All in all, only around 2% of the approximately 250 tales of transformation depicted in this Ovidian text involve non-deities changing, either singularly or plurally, and then subsequently resuming their prior humanoid aspects.
(126) This is true especially when the people plurally or severally--rather than as a unity-"exercise editorial control through contesting what government does under a dispensation that sets the terms and the channels of legitimate, potentially effective contestation" such as through a street protest or, for my purposes, the legal system.
But this is not in the gift of any fair-minded devolved government and hapless efforts to paint this brave new world as plurally desirable or democratically feasible are completely unworthy.
Often, the absence of transparency in administrative contract management makes it impossible for social players such as the Prosecutors' Office, the Federal Audit Court, the General Comptrollership of the Federal Government and others to act plurally and at multiple levels.
Being is singularly plural and plurally singular as if Being is or has a certain number of attributes, one of which is that of being singular-plural--however double, contradictory, or chiasmatic this may be" (28).
C endorses the doctrine of Composition as Identity, which holds that a composite object is (plurally) identical to its many parts, and entails that one object can be (plurally) identical to several others.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, by establishing provincial governance either singly or plurally as stipulated therein, -
In line with social and political organizations' pursuit of violence, poverty, challenge, reconciliation and alliance, I make the case that Islamism too is being plurally reconstructed.
But when Steve Coogan's comic creation was extolling the virtues of the Lexus (or Lexi as he referred to them plurally) at the peak of his popularity, it certainly did the brand no harm.