What is the plural form of the noun "goose"?

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The plural form of the noun “goose” is geese.

Geese is an irregular plural because it does not add the usual English plural ending -s or -es. Instead, the vowel in goose changes, a historical pattern inherited from Old English. Old English used forms related to gōs for the singular and gēs for the plural; later sound and spelling changes helped produce modern goose and geese.

This pattern is sometimes called a mutated or vowel-change plural. English retains several similar pairs, including man and men, foot and feet, tooth and teeth, mouse and mice, and louse and lice. These forms are remnants of older Germanic grammatical processes rather than productive rules that speakers normally apply to new words.

The wrong forms in this question are common guesses because regular nouns usually take -s: book becomes books and river becomes rivers. Gooses is not the standard plural of goose, although it can occasionally appear when writers discuss the verb goose or use the word playfully. A group of geese may be called a gaggle on the ground, while a flying group can be called a skein or wedge.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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