Is there a word equipments

Here, I beg to differ. I agree that equipment is an uncountable noun and that, in the normal course, one refers to «types of» or «kinds of» equipment, when referring to the class of things called «equipment» as a whole,

But it’s simply not correct to say that one cannot grammatically use equipment in the plural or with the definite and indefinite articles. One simply has to remember that, in so doing, one is referring to the class of thing called «equipment», rather than to any one member or other, or even a subgroup, of that class.

For instance, «The farmer offers several milks for sale, including whole, low-fat, no-fat and chocolate.» And, «The manufacturer offers several equipments, including high-tech, low-tech, medical and agricultural.» All this is perfectly understandable.

Moreover, one can say, following on an abstract discussion of classes of things in ordinary use, «What kind of thing is that?», and hear the response given, «It’s an equipment.» Also, one can refer to «the many equipments I use in the course of my day», referring here to kinds of equipment, rather than to one example or other of any such equipment. Again, all this is perfectly understandable.

However, one uses these constructions in ordinary English in the same way that one uses the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif in ordinary conversational French: That is, at great risk of sounding like an effete snob, or a comic, or ….. British !

Cheers

Asked by: Amelie Davis

Score: 4.8/5
(73 votes)

We use the uncountable noun

uncountable noun

In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, or non-count noun is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elements. … Mass nouns have no concept of singular and plural, although in English they take singular verb forms.

equipment to mean ‘the set of things that you need for a particular purpose‘, such as tools or clothing: We’ve bought camping equipment, including new sleeping bags and a little refrigerator. All of Vincent’s camera equipment was stolen from his car.

What is equipment used for?

Equipment most commonly refers to a set of tools or other objects commonly used to achieve a particular objective. Different jobs require different kinds of equipment.

How do you use the word equipment?

The noun equipment does not have a plural form. It is used in the singular only, with a singular verb, and there is no word «equipments.» Nouns like this are called «noncount nouns» (or «mass nouns») and there are over 100 common nouns in this category.

What is the meaning of equipments?

1a : the set of articles or physical resources serving to equip a person or thing: such as. (1) : the implements used in an operation or activity : apparatus sports equipment. (2) : all the fixed assets other than land and buildings of a business enterprise. (3) : the rolling stock of a railway.

Can I say equipment are?

Equipment is collective noun and as such can be used in plural. Although there are a lot of collective nouns that can be used with -s or without and they mean different things.

42 related questions found

Last Updated:
11 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences

At first, a couple of general remarks on the count/non-count dichotomy in linguistics. (Incidentally, this dichotomy is language-specific).

What is taught in school about this distinction, whether English is your L1 or L2, is a gross oversimplification. It is done for pedagogical reasons.

However, in linguistics, it has been abandoned for various reasons. On the one hand, as Allan showed in his 1980 paper in “Language”, it is better to think of countability as a continuum, see the following examples (from the most countable to the least countable):

car, oak, cattle, scissors, mankind, admiration, equipment, Himalayas.

One the other hand, as Payne and Huddleston (2002) argue, “many nouns can be used with either a count or non-count interpretation”. They also add that since in some cases “the existence of paired count and non-count senses is entirely predictable, so that it is not necessary for a dictionary to list both”.

To make things even more complicated, some linguists have proposed up to eighteen types of concrete nouns only (e.g. Goddard 2009).

In natural languages, there is obviously a lot of variation. However, the trend is that the form “equipments” is not common. For example, I searched The Times and The Sunday Times, and “equipments” returned zero hits. Same with The Guardian. If you are an L2 learner of English, I’d recommend forgetting about the existence of that form altogether.

Some commenters suggested it might be used in cases when different types of equipment are meant. See, however, the following example from The Times:

Makro is also stronger in non-food items, such as stationery and office equipment.

Now, with The NY Times, things are a bit different.

Searching the archives from 1980 to present and manually going through the results, I got 28 hits only. Six of them were company names (Recognition Equipments Inc., Digital Equipments etc.) and one was obviously a typo:

According to Dr. P. L. Fan of the Council on Dental Materials, Instruments and Equipments, …. (1987) – see the original report here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1918680

Another sentence suspiciously looks like a typo, too:

In the face of such enmity, Pakistan’s armed forces stand more and more vulnerable as old, mostly American equipments wears [sic!] out, with no ready replacements. (1980)

But:

That will include $800,000 a year in grants for the groups, $100,000 a year in sports equipments, and 15,000 tickets a year to Yankee home games. (2006)

Several ski equipments are presented. (2007)

The microphone was in place, and the synthesizer and other electronic equipments were turned on. (1984)

Now, if you search the archives of the NY Times for 1851-2008, things are a bit different.
I got 9983 results, with the highest peak for 1960-1969 – 1524 results.

An important thing about those examples – it seems most of them are classified ads, e.g. “Candidates should have at least four years of maintenance experience on the above equipments” (1962).

Only the first five hits were from the other sections of the newspaper, four of them written by the same person, Burton Crane.

Oils, drugs, office equipments and a number of the high-price stocks known as … (1961)

Now about the OED examples. There are 30 occurrences in quotations (I excluded definitions).

one – 18th century

eleven – 19th century

seventeen – 20th century (most of them are used in engineering or military contexts)

one – 21th century

If you search the BNC, you can see that in British English the form “equipments” is mostly used by the military:

Total number of occurrences: 27

7 of those come from ABA Britain’s defence dilemma. 1990.

6 come from JNM House of Commons Select Committee for Defence: meeting (Public/institutional). Recorded on 9 February 1994

3 come from JNN House of Commons Select Committee for Defence: meeting (Public/institutional). Recorded on 9 February 1994

etc.

With dictionaries, you need to remember one very important thing — they are a good place to start your research but you shouldn’t base your answer solely on the OED (OED-thumping) or some other dictionary.