The Plural of “Calf” is “Calves,” or is it?
An NPR reporter talking about Colorado ranchers mentioned the income they get when they sell the offspring of their cattle. What she said was:
when they sell their [kăfs].
She pronounced the plural of calf, which is spelled calves, as [kăfs].
I’ve heard speakers on radio and television pronounce the plural of knife as [nīfs], elf as [ĕlfs], and life as [līfs], but never gave the matter much thought because they were not speaking in a formal context. Perhaps these pronunciations represent a trend.
English has a small group of nouns ending in f that form their plurals by changing the f to v and adding es. Calf belongs to this group. At least, it used to.
calf calves
elf elves
half halves
knife knives
leaf leaves
life lives
loaf loaves
self selves
sheaf sheaves
shelf shelves
thief thieves
wharf wharves
wife wives
Other nouns that end in f form their plurals simply by adding s. For example:
belief beliefs (the verb is believe)
chief chiefs
cliff cliffs
fife fifes
grief griefs (the verb is grieve)
gulf gulfs
hoof hoofs (some speakers say hooves and spell it hooves)
proof proofs (the verb is prove)
roof roofs (some speakers say rooves, but still spell it roofs)
safe safes (the verb is save)
strife strifes (the verb is strive)
Some fantasy fans may argue the merits of dwarfs versus dwarves, but as long ago as 1937, Walt Disney gave us Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
My old high school English handbook gives hoofs as the plural of hoof, but I remember this line from a poem students were required to memorize:
Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear. –”The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes
Both sounds represented by the letters f and v are formed by placing lips and teeth in the same postion. The only difference between the sounds is that v is voiced and f is not. The feminine of fox is vixen. Before the 1500s, it was fyxan
.
The small group of words that follow the plural forming rule of change the f to v and add es seems to be in the process of dwindling further. Maybe English teachers have stopped teaching the rule.
Will speakers who say [kăfs] for the plural of calf still write the word as calves? Or will they write calfs?
Maeve Maddox on January 1, 2009 
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Calves works fine for me. This calf, those calves, they each look healthy.
Calfs and dwarfs are like “ain’t” - in popular use, but not proper. Sue me.
“roof roofs (some speakers say rooves, but still spell it roofs)
safe safes (the verb is save)
strife strifes (the verb is strive)”
The differentiation between the verbs and nouns is worth noting.
Perhaps some of the confusion stems from using some of the words as verbs…..
…when the tree leafs out….
…when he roofs the addition…..
I still believe that we gave up quality education when we stopped teaching phonics and word origins for rote memorization….. Our language skills have spiraled downhill ever since.
As a non-native speaker, I would write calves and not calfs, but I’m not aware of the different pronunciation. I think I wouldn’t have ‘detected’ the mistake, mainly because in German, V is really pronounced as F/PH. The word “von” is really pronounced as “fon”, so I’d pronounce calves and all the other -ves plurals probably as -fs
And of course, I’m aware that the correct form should be dwarfs, but since Tolkien introduced Dwarves as the plural for the race in contrast to just the condition of being of short height, I do like how Dwarves looks… but I probably pronounce it ‘dwarfs’ anyway.
I doubt I’ll ever understand where “beeves” comes from - it’s sometimes used at the plural of beef, or perhaps of “cow destined to become beef”. Perhaps it’s just a technical term, with no explanation beyond that.
Tolkien was asked once about “dwarves vs dwarfs” and made some comment that perhaps the proper plural was “dwarren”. Of course, he may have been joking.
LuAnn:
“I still believe that we gave up quality education when we stopped teaching phonics and word origins for rote memorization…”
Could I add diagramming sentences to that?