Plurals are buggers to house-train. Or should that be bugger-singular, confining plurals to their own box – a self-contained category? That’s a prime example. One cat is a cat; two cats are two cats. Mostly plurals behave, yet what of the Rabbitohs, say? As a team, the red-and-myrtle South Sydney Rabbitohs is singular, which sounds ridiculous. Rabbitohs is…? Souths is…? I’m not buying it.

Melbourne Storm is another headache. Storm is, or Storm are? Either version works for me, be that the stand-alone franchise as much as Cameron Munster and his mates, your verb-choice reflecting which emphasis you seek to favour in the moment, but pedants won’t forgive such laissez-faire. You need to pick a side, they cry: Rabbitohs is or Storm are? One or the other, not both, or “it depends”.

And if teams bewilder, try spaghetti. Translating as little straps, spaghetti is its own Italian plural, just as little worms lie in vermicelli. Obvious on paper, but see how you fare saying “The spaghetti are delicious”, or “Don’t look now, darling, but a fusillo landed on your jacket.” Plurals can undo you.

Care for a salamo, senor? Perhaps a broccolo? Maybe two vini? By now you’re questioning my agendum, which isn’t so hidden. Whether we deal in sporting squads or imported nouns, the traps proliferate. Chris Hulley, a reader braving this mess, made a shrewd observation about a plural’s lifespan:

“By my understanding, when a word with an irregular plural is used in a new context, the plural becomes regular. Thus, an ant has two antennae, but my TV has two antennas. My book has two indices but my database table has two indexes.” More evidence rests in chatroom forums, versus the fora across the Roman Empire. In speech, bureaus (the word) is plainer than bureaux. English simplifies over time, opening the way for spaghetti (singular) and computer mouses.

I’d love to say that the grammar police are investigating the matter, but the law demands that the police is investigating.

That PC-mouse bobbed up in a recent column, sparking a dozen responses. James Reid, for one, saw the plural debate as complex, owing to the gadget being a covert acronym of Manually Operated User-Selection Equipment. Neat in theory, but I sniffed a red herring.

Linguists call them backronyms. Posh, say, is a folkloric connivance of Port Outward, Starboard Home, alluding to monied British passengers opting for a liner’s shaded side when travelling. Bollocks! Ditto for golf: gentlemen only, ladies forbidden. Try telling that to Perth’s world-beater Minjee Lee: codswallop!

Still on mouses, the computer kind, Tony McIntyre recalled his time devising programs in the mid-1980s. “The Microsoft manual used the term rodometer – rodent meets odometer.” A simpler name to pluralise, had they stuck with the label. In fact, Tony reports that a mouse’s movement in the X-direction is measured in Mickeys, while the Y-axis banks on Minnies.