Sally says "The thing that scares me the most are the little oranges in its stomach."
at 4:50 in the TV drama "3rd Rock From the Sun S1E3 Dick's First Birthday".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgj83qt7fqA
Please notice that "thing" is singular whereas "oranges" is plural.
I'm wondering which one of the following statements about the sentence is correct.
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It is grammatically correct and perfectly makes sense.
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It is grammatically incorrect and most people frown upon it.
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It is grammatically incorrect, but most people think it is natural and don't care.
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Else.
Best Answer
It is grammatically incorrect, but most people think it is natural and don't care.
The simple subject is thing, which is singular, so the verb must be singular to agree with it. Notice that in the subordinate clause, scares is singular, agreeing with thing.
The speaker got confused because it seems strange to say that a singular thing "is" a plural like oranges. That's more than one orange, right? Perhaps the speaker could revise the sentence so the subject is "the things that scare me the most". But there are two problems with that. First, the idiomatic phrase is "the thing that scares me the most". If you say "the things that scare me the most", that's weaker, because then you aren't pointing out the #1 scariest thing. Second, the speaker starts saying the sentence before choosing the main verb. By the time the speaker has said "The thing that scares me the most", it's too late to change it. At that point, the speaker sees oranges coming up ahead, and scrambles to choose the verb. "Is" sounds wrong because of oranges; "are" sounds wrong because of thing. Oh no!! There's no time to think this through, so the speaker compromises and chooses a verb to agree with oranges, dimly sensing that something is wrong.
And then life goes on.