Subject-Verb Agreement – Is ‘Degrees’ Singular or Plural?

subject-verb-agreement

I was talking to native. They corrected me and said that usually we use "is" with degrees. For example:

There is 27 degrees here.

And we shouldn't use it like that:

There are 27 degrees here.

Is it true? Is here some rule for that…? Cause I don't get it. For me, degrees is plural. Why should we use "is" here?

Best Answer

"Degree" is a count noun. The singular form is "a [or one] degree" and the plural is "degrees." This is true for both temperature and geometry.

But when discussing the temperature at some place, we do not say "There are XX degrees here." Instead we describe the temperature (which is a singular noun):

The temperature here is 27 degrees.
It is 27 degrees here.

So that may be why the person you were talking to associated the singular form of the verb to be with the plural noun "degrees."

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