Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[yoshi-pooh]

Hi, everyone!

I'd like to ask you how to use the word "head" to count animals.
Please take a look at the sentences below.

A:The man has more than 1,000 head of cattle on his ranch.
B:The man has more than 1,000 heads of cattle on his ranch.

I thought heads should be used when the number is more than one.

However, my dictionay gives an example of "forty head of cattle" and the search result on Google also shows the singular form " head" is common. I wonder why singular form is used for the cases like A?

Thank you

yoshi-pooh

[CP]

I don't know why, but it is certain that you never hear "heads of cattle," but always, "head of cattle."
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[Jintii]

I agree with CP. When counting livestock, head is always singular.

[yoshi-pooh]

Hi, everyone.

CP and Jintii, thank you for your replies.
I'd like to ask one more thing about this.
I googled " head of cattle" and "heads of cattle" respectively and the result was that "head" outnumbered "heads" by 727,000 to 74,000.
This seems to show that "head" is more correct, but I wonder why there were so many hits of "heads", which both CP and Jintii say wrong.
I suppose this is a common mistake English speakers make. Do you think my guess is right?

yoshi-pooh

[CP]

It's an error, but I'm not sure how common among native speakers. I've never heard "heads of cattle" coming from the head of an English speaker.

I also googled "heads of cattle," and I came up with about 72,200 instances. The first of them was from yourdictionary.com, in the title of an article telling how the root words for "head" became such diverse words as "biceps" and "cattle" and "chapter." It could have as easily been titled, "Heads of Chapters."

The rest of the first 10 came from places where English is not the native tongue, such as Mongolia, Russia, Africa, and Brazil. It is only expected that "heads" would be used for the plural by non-native speakers.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[yoshi-pooh]

Hi, CP

Thanks again for your reply. I hope there aren't so many exceptional words like head.

Regards,

yoshi-pooh

[CP]

I hate to break it to you, Yoshi, but there so many strange twists in English, no one can know them all. We never stop learning English, and that means native speakers and ESLers alike.

English keeps adding words from other languages, sometimes changing them, sometimes not. And people keep making up words, using old words in new ways, and changing the meanings of existing words.

As for words like "head," there aren't many. But you will hear someone say that the room is "20 foot long" instead of "20 feet long," or that the truck is hauling "16 ton of steel" instead of "16 tons of steel," or that a car can do "120 mile an hour" instead of "120 miles an hour." The use of the singular there is not standard, but common enough, and maybe one day "16 ton of steel" will be like "16 head of cattle."
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[LucentShade]