Talk:Fairey Swordfish
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"out moded"
editso let's get this straight, in 1937 they were just beginning to replace the Blackburn Shark with the new, more modern Fairy Swordfish. In 1939 the Swordfish was obsolete and outmoded. So an aircraft was good for about two years in the late 1930s? Idumea47b (talk) 14:27, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Plural form
editThe word 'fish' is often used as a plural form for the same word, but the correct plural form when discussing the animals is to append the suffix 'es'. 'Fish' should be correctly pluralised to 'fishes'. Common usage etc means that's not always the case. Likewise, the more correct plural form of the animal 'swordfish' is 'swordfishes', which really is a great aid to distinguishing singular from plural and is actually easy to use and not clunky, having used it.
However, this is not the animal which we are discussing, but rather a machine named for the individual animal.
Normal practice, however, seems to be to pluralise a machine's service name with 's' or less usually 'es' ('Halifaxes'). So, for example, the Vickers Vildebeest: Whilst a 'wildebeest' (the namesake animal, despite the 'v') is just as correctly described in plural as "a herd of wildebeest", yet the aircraft would be pluralised with an 's' suffix: "At the outbreak of the Second World War, 101 Vildebeests were still in service with the RAF".
So, more correctly (and anticipating that this discussion will be met with neither condescension or angry rejectionism, but will be at least considered or discussed on its own merits in a friendly manner), should the Fairey Swordfish be pluralised to 'Fairey Swordfishes', aiding the distinction between singular and plural? 2A00:23C7:3131:FE01:7C26:374:8921:9058 (talk) 17:06, 27 January 2024 (UTC)