Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[organica]

I understand that 'to scale' is a synonym for 'to climb.'

When you scale mountain walls, do you always need an equipment to scale with, or can you just scale with bare hands? I thought climbing mountain doesn't necessarily entail climbing with equipments (even though they sometimes do use equipments.)

Thank you very much for your help.

[Mister Micawber]

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No need for equipment; long fingernails are sufficient.
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"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." � Gertrude Stein
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Canadian-American who teaches English for a living at Mr Micawber's

[LucentShade]

One thing: "equipment" doesn't need to be pluralized, and it doesn't need the article "an," either.

You can say, "Do you always need equipment to scale with?" and "...doesn't necessarily entail climbing with equipment (even though they sometimes do use equipment)."

I guess "equipment" is an uncountable noun, since it can refer to a group of items necessary for a task. To use the indefinite article, you'd have to insert a partitive like "I bought a piece of equpiment." This is similar to "a blade of grass" or "a drop of water." However, you can say, "The equipment is old."

[organica]

Thank you for the important tip re: equipment.

However, I've encountered "equipment" used as plural on the Websites quite often. The following sentence is one example:

"The larger part is made up by the host of specialised equipments that such a frigate contains."

When "equipment" is used with plural suffix, "-s", does the meaning change, or is the sentence given above grammatically incorrect?
Thank you for your help.

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One more quetion to clarify "scaling mountains":

When Mister Micauber wrote, "no need for equipmentnt," does it also include that we can can scale mountains with equipment if we want?

Thank you very much.