Learn English – How to use the word ‘Software’ as plural

plural-forms

Why do you worry when software are available for that?

I know that 'software' is a mass noun and thus the plural is 'software'. To avoid this situation (as in given sentence), I always play smart –

Why do you worry when software tools are available for that?

This I do just to satisfy myself seeing software with are since I know I cannot use softwares. But then using tools mean something else. It's, after all, a tool!

Is there any way to describe plural of software

Best Answer

As pointed out in your question software is a mass noun also known as uncountable. Some uncountable nouns can be used in plural, and Google n-grams reports a number of instances for softwares:

"These softwares permit simple mapping of the existing data and offer good compatibility with other softwares." (Don De Savigny, ‎Pandu Wijeyaratne - 1995)

"In addition, these softwares, although said to be "symbolic" fail to provide explicit motion equations of the considered system." (Thomas Lee - 1993)

"Many microcomputers are equipped with softwares built on ROM." (The Malaysian Agricultural Digest - Volumes 2-3 - Page 48)

"All ten softwares have been written in Turbo Pascal for the IBM and IBM compatible computers." (Mark Keegan - 1995)

"the communication between the two softwares uses a common memory zone." (Philippe Geril - 1986)

"Dozens of well-developed softwares for computer-assisted molecular design based on 3D—CG are commercially available and are now widely used (8)." (H. Timmerman, ‎T. Fujita - 1995)

"The Decision Making Software is a set of softwares to make control decisions of the agent." (M Ahmad, ‎William G. Sullivan - 1993)

"There are many commercial data mining softwares available in the market that can be applied to financial applications." (George T. Albanis - 2003)

The question arises whether this use of softwares is the result of the influence from non-native speakers of English or simply the natural evolution of its use. This is a question especially difficult to answer for technical terms such as software.

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