Question

What is the plural form of the word ‘criterion’?

a)Criterions
b)Criteriae
c)Criteria
d)Criterias

Answer 1

Hint: Plural form of the words ending with ‘-on’ ends with ‘-a’.

Complete step-by-step answer:

There are certain specific rules which we need to remember and apply, pertaining to the concept of Singular and Plural words.
 While most of the nouns are converted to plural by adding an 's' or 'es' at the end. How a word will be converted to its plural form is mostly determined by what letter it ends in. For example, the words ending with 'o', 'o' is replaced by 'es', like in the case of Potato (plural: Potatoes); for the words ending in the form where the last two letters are vowels+y, then we simply add an 's' in the end, eg: the plural of Boy is Boys.
Now, we know that in the case of the words ending with 'on', the plural form is attained by removing the last two letters and adding an 'a' in the end, for instance, the plural form of the singular word 'Phenomenon' is 'Phenomena', and similarly, the plural of the word 'Criterion' would be 'Criteria'. With that note, we see that options a,b and d are incorrect and option B is the correct alternative.

Note: Remember to be very careful while changing the words from singular to plural, as different sets of words have different grammatical rules to be applied. A lot of students commit the mistake of not adhering to the rules, we must avoid that.