OBS. 31.—­My chief concern is with general principles, but the illustration of these requires many particular examples—­even far more than I have room to quote.  The word amends is represented by Murray and others, as being singular as well as plural; but Webster’s late dictionaries exhibit amend as singular, and amends as plural, with definitions that needlessly differ, though not much.  I judge “an amends” to be bad English; and prefer the regular singular, an amend.  The word is of French origin, and is sometimes written in English with a needless final e; as, “But only to make a kind of honourable amende to God.”—­Rollin’s Ancient Hist., Vol. ii, p. 24.  The word remains Dr. Webster puts down as plural only, and yet uses it himself in the singular:  “The creation of a Dictator, even for a few months, would have buried every remain of freedom.”—­Webster’s Essays, p. 70.  There are also other authorities for this usage, and also for some other nouns that are commonly thought to have no singular; as, “But Duelling is unlawful and murderous, a remain of the ancient Gothic barbarity.”—­Brown’s Divinity, p. 26.  “I grieve with the old, for so many additional inconveniences, more than their small remain of life seemed destined to undergo.”—­POPE:  in Joh.  Dict. “A disjunctive syllogism is one whose major premise is disjunctive.”—­Hedge’s Logic.  “Where should he have this gold?  It is some poor fragment, some slender ort of his remainder.”—­SHAK.:  Timon of Athens.

OBS. 32.—­There are several nouns which are usually alike in both numbers.  Thus, deer, folk, fry, gentry, grouse, hose, neat, sheep, swine, vermin, and rest, (i. e. the rest, the others, the residue,) are regular singulars, but they are used also as plurals, and that more frequently.  Again, alms, aloes, bellows, means, news, odds, shambles, and species, are proper plurals, but most of them are oftener construed as singulars. Folk and fry are collective nouns. Folk means people; a folk, a people:  as, “The ants are a people not strong;”—­“The conies are but a feeble folk.”—­Prov., xxx, 25, 26.  “He laid his hands on a few sick folk, and healed them.”—­Mark, vi, 5. Folks, which ought to be the plural of folk, and equivalent to peoples, is now used with reference to a plurality of individuals, and the collective word seems liable to be entirely superseded by it.  A fry is a swarm of young fishes, or of any other little creatures living in water:  so called, perhaps, because their motions often make the surface fry.  Several such swarms might properly be called fries; but this form can never be applied to the individuals, without interfering with the other.  “So numerous was the fry.”—­Cowper.  “The fry betake themselves to the neighbouring pools.”—­Quarterly Review.  “You cannot think more contemptuously of these gentry than they were thought of by the true prophets.”—­Watson’s Apology, p. 93. “Grouse, a heathcock.”—­Johnson.