What’s the plural of “rhinoceros”?
Rhinoceros, rhinoceroses and rhinoceri are all accepted to mean more than one of these nose-horned mammals, the rhinoceros. Of the three plural forms, the rhinoceros and rhinoceroses are most commonly used.
Is rhinoceros singular or plural?
Rhinoceros is accepted as both a singular and plural noun form to refer to these large, horned mammals (the rhinos, for short).
Nouns that are the same singular and plural
Though rhinoceros has multiple plurals, commonly just rhinos or rhinoceros are used for both the singular and plural. Similarly, these other words/nouns do not change between the singular and the plural:
What are rhinoceros?
Brittanica Encyclopedia describes the rhinoceros as:
Rhinoceros, (family Rhinocerotidae), plural rhinoceroses, rhinoceros, or rhinoceri, any of five or six species of giant horn-bearing herbivores that include some of the largest living land mammals.
Examples of rhinoceros used in context
1. Powdered rhinoceros horn has been a highly sought commodity in traditional Chinese medicine—not as an aphrodisiac, as is often widely reported, but as an antifever agent. (Brittanica, rhino.)
2. The rhinoceros’s horn is also the cause of its demise.
3. White rhinoceros are the largest, weighing up to 3,500kg.
4. Individuals usually avoid each other, but the white rhinoceros lives in groups of up to 10 animals.
5. Weighing around 600kg, Sumatran rhinoceros are the smallest.
Examples of rhinoceros used in context
1. Today the total population of all the rhinoceros species combined is probably fewer than 30,000.
2. Here, photographers can get vantage points to compose shots of elephants, rhinos, cheetahs, hyenas, gazelles and waterbucks.
3. Rhinoceroses today are restricted to eastern and southern Africa and to subtropical and tropical Asia.
4. That is a family of four rhinoceros.
5. Male rhinoceroses are called “bulls” and female rhinoceroses are called “cows.” Their young are “calves.”
Origin of the word rhinoceros
From etymonline on rhinoceros:
“from Latin rhinoceros, from Greek rhinokerōs, literally “nose-horned,” from rhinos “nose”.
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