In this post, I will compare scissor vs. scissors. I will use each of these words in at least one example sentence. The wounds Kralik suffered were consistent with what the scissors would have caused. You can do that and other basic editing tasks by tapping the scissors icon at the top of your screen.
Grammar & Usage
Today, handheld cutting tools are ubiquitous in human society. In the developed world, a child’s ability to adroitly wield a pair of scissors is viewed as an important developmental milestone. When scissors denotes a cutting implement, it can be either plural or singular.
- I will use each of these words in at least one example sentence.
- In this post, I will compare scissor vs. scissors.
- In Vulgar Latin, caesorium referred to a cutting instrument, and this Latin word was singular—even though the cutting instrument it named had two blades that slid past each other.
For example, both hand me those scissors and hand me that scissors work. Many usage authorities recommend treating scissors as plural, however, and doing so may be the safer choice. When you need it to be singular, pair of scissors is a good alternative.
Examples of scissor in a Sentence
It is almost never used, much the same way that bellows are nearly always referred to in the plural. As noted above, the default singular form would be a pair of scissors. Scissors are two handheld blades fastened together that are used for cutting things. Scissors are usually referred to in the plural or as a pair of scissors.
Popular in Wordplay
Scissor does work as a verb—meaning to cut or clip with scissors—but it’s not a dictionary-recognized noun. Humans have been using scissors for at least 3,000 years. They are a very useful tool for cutting a variety of materials, including paper, rope, wire, and cloth. Some English speakers might use scissor as a verb that means to cut something with scissors or to cut between something.
One of the first things that English speakers learn about nouns is that they are singular (“a cup”) and plural (“many what are the disclosures for a producer’s inventory cups”). Dogs, cats, bills, lions, scissors are the plural forms of dog, cat, bill, lion, and…nothing. In Modern English, scissors has no singular form. Scissor is the singular version of the same noun.
Transition Words and Phrases
This usage is viewed as nonstandard in the linguistic community, though it may eventually gain acceptance. The word itself can be traced to equivalent terms in English and Middle French. Interestingly, the original Latin form of this word was singular and was derived from a verb that meant to cut.
They are almost always plural or referred to as a pair of scissors. Thus, the singular scissor is almost never used. In general, this tool is always referred to in the plural, like in the phrase hand me the scissors. The closest singular form would be a single pair of scissors, as in the phrase hand me that pair of scissors. In your own writing, you should default to scissors as well.
Miss Rivers took up some brown leaves which she was cutting out with scissors, and shaping. They were tangled, too, and Jess cut them off evenly by a string, with Violet’s little scissors. Taking the scissors from Violet’s workbag, she cut the laundry bag carefully into two pieces, saving the cord for a clothesline. He still cuts and pastes—literally, with scissors and tape—as he edits each chapter of each book.
The pluralia tantum for cutting implements have, as a group, also been adapted into verbs that are based on a nonexistent singular (just to be confusing). This gave us scissor (as in, “the kindergartner scissored the paper into strips”), shear (“he sheared his beard off”), and tweeze (“she tweezed her eyebrows”). Writers sometimes change scissors into scissor when it’s singular, but there’s no need for this.
Scissors, like many pluralia tantum, traces back to a grammatically singular word. In Vulgar Latin, caesorium referred to a cutting instrument, and this Latin word was singular—even though the cutting instrument it named had two blades that slid past each other. When the word was borrowed into Middle French, French speakers gave it both a singular form (cisoire) and a plural form (cisoires). The plural didn’t refer to multiple cutting implements, however; it was modeled on the two blades of a single caesorium. Scissors are handheld shearing tools that are useful for cutting many things.