Is equipments a legitimate English word?
July 27, 2005 8:09 AM   Subscribe

Is equipments a legitimate English word?
I mean, can 1.84 million google hits all be wrong?
posted by iconjack to Writing & Language (21 answers total)
 
Yes. Equipment is plural. Equipments is a non-word.
posted by peacay at 8:23 AM on July 27, 2005


The Oxford English Dictionary says yes, but — despite Google — its usage in the plural seems to stop after the early 1800s:

equipment

[f. EQUIP v. + -MENT. Cf. Fr. équipement.]

...

2. concr. Anything used in equipping; furniture; outfit; warlike apparatus; necessaries for an expedition or voyage. Used in the pl. to indicate the articles severally, in the sing. collectively.

1717 L. HOWEL Desiderius (ed. 3) 14 See my Crook, my Scrip, Box and other Parts of my equipment. 1793 SMEATON Edystone L. §275 To forward our equipments for rendering the house habitable. 1801 STRUTT Sports & Past. II. i. 46 The hunting equipments of the female archers. 1813 WELLINGTON in Gurw. Disp. X. 479 When you shall be in possession of your equipment of ordnance, etc. 1870 HOWSON Metaph. Paul i. 16 The helmet is..the brightest..part of the soldier's equipment. 1873 Act 36 & 37 Vict. c. 88 Sched. 1, Equipments which are primâ facie evidence of a Vessel being engaged in the Slave Trade. 1879 Cassell's Techn. Educ. III. 264, I include under the general term equipment all that must be actually present with the fighting portion of an army at any one moment.

posted by Rothko at 8:25 AM on July 27, 2005


"Softwares" gave me 2.46 M hits.
posted by shoos at 8:28 AM on July 27, 2005


Perhaps it's a regionalism? There are 1.08 million Google hits for equipments+india, suggesting maybe they do use that term over there.
posted by smackfu at 8:35 AM on July 27, 2005


I'd vote for a regional thing. One thing that reading Patrick O'Brian has shown me is that a lot of words I assume are collective plurals (such as equipment) can take an S in other parts of the world. (At this point I'd offer a bunch of examples from O'Brian, but I don't have any of his books at hand.)
posted by jdroth at 8:48 AM on July 27, 2005


can 1.84 million google hits all be wrong?

Welcome to the internets.
posted by caddis at 8:57 AM on July 27, 2005


3.1 million common misspellings don't mean a thing, either.

The Dictionary: 500 Years, and Still Not Obsolete!
posted by scody at 9:14 AM on July 27, 2005


Yes. Equipment is plural.

Really? I don't know the proper grammatical term for it, but isn't 'equipment' actually a non-pluralizable grouping or material noun like 'mud' or 'steel'? You can't say 'You have many equipment(s)' or 'There are five equipment(s).' Instead: 'You have a lot of equipment' and 'There are five types (or pieces) of equipment.'
posted by nobody at 10:18 AM on July 27, 2005


Nobody--that's generally called a non-counting noun or mass noun. And I agree that "equipment" is an example of one.

I also agree that "equipments" is not standard English. It apparently has some archaic uses, and there's plenty of illiterate or non-standard writing out there, but I would avoid it.
posted by adamrice at 10:38 AM on July 27, 2005


I get 794,000 hits for "softs". But only 434,000 for "hards".

Being on Google doesn't make it correct. LOL (8,880,000)
posted by shepd at 11:45 AM on July 27, 2005


nobody/adamrice...I concede the point. I guess I meant implicity plural but that's still not quite right. But adding an 's' is just not an option.
posted by peacay at 11:55 AM on July 27, 2005


The Dictionary: 500 Years, and Still Not Obsolete!

More like 350, apparently, if one means something listing other than hard or obscure words.

Moreover, the idea that words had correct spellings didn't settle in for another century. Even for one's own name! Shagspear, Shackspere, Shaxpear, etc.

However, "equipments" is definitely wrong.
posted by Aknaton at 12:34 PM on July 27, 2005


Aknation: The chinese had dictionaries at least a thousand years ago. I took a Chinese history class and remember that, although I couldn't tell you when it was made :P
posted by delmoi at 12:56 PM on July 27, 2005


Other people answered the first question more eloquently.

To the second question: can 1.84 million google hits all be wrong? Absolutely.
posted by raedyn at 1:20 PM on July 27, 2005


However, "equipments" is definitely wrong.

OED says otherwise, even if the usage is archaic.
posted by Rothko at 1:23 PM on July 27, 2005


Well, how about when you're speaking about two entirely different kinds of equipment?

"The doctors and the clowns both forgot to bring their respective equipments."
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:30 PM on July 27, 2005


"equip" can be a verb, yeah? So "equipments" would be some plural events in which stuff got equipped.
posted by sfenders at 1:52 PM on July 27, 2005


...or would that be "equippings"? (122 results on google)
posted by sfenders at 4:10 PM on July 27, 2005


I'm an editor and I would refuse to allow a sentence like "The doctors and the clowns both forgot to bring their respective equipments" into print. I would argue that "The doctors and the clowns both forgot to bring their respective equipment" is still perfectly clear, though I would amend it to something like "...their respective pieces of equipment" if there really did seem to be a risk of ambiguity.
posted by scody at 4:15 PM on July 27, 2005


Also: "equippings" is the correct word for what you're going for, sfenders.
posted by scody at 4:18 PM on July 27, 2005


Well my first thought was maybe there's a lot of people who have problems with apostrophes but having a look at some of those google links, it seems that equipments is often used to refer to refer to multiple categories of equipment. Effectively it allows a particular set of equipment to be viewed as a discreet unit separate from another set of equipment. Is this a legitimate use?
posted by biffa at 1:32 AM on July 28, 2005


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