Thank you Dr. Whom! It is interesting that in French the proper word is also a plural, "les selles"--one never speaks of this in the singular. However, in colloquial French, the well-known term "merde" has a diminutive form used to describe a single fex: "merdon" (similar to lardon) and best translated as "turd". We may have the beginnings of a truly scatological dictionary here! On Nov 11, 2003, at 1:02 PM, Mark A Mandel wrote: > On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Kenneth Gorelick wrote: > > #Since this seems to be a linguistically talented group, can anyone, > #using the below hypotheses, provide me with the singular of "feces"? > > In Latin the word is "faeces", which is the spelling used in British > English. The Latin singular is "faex". If English had imported the > latter we would spell it "fex" west of the Water; but we didn't. In > English there is no singular form. > > -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and > Philological Busybody > a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel > >