Can listening be countable? Can I say We will do a listening during today's lesson?
Best Answer
You can treat pretty much any -ing word as countable if you want to. Whether you want to or not depends on the effect you’re striving for. There is, for example, a children’s rhyme which includes ‘We / Are tired of scoldings and sendings to bed: / Now the grown-ups shall be punished instead.’ In other contexts, sendings would sound strange, and listenings would normally sound strange to me, too. Best avoided, I'd say.
C.noun III. A particular thing that is good. 7. Property or possessions; now in more restricted sense, movable property. a.
(a) plural
(b) The plural form occurs as a sing.: Property, an amount of property. (Cf. sense C. 7d)
So yes, the plural form can occur as a singular, and mean a certain amount of property; a thing. In my experience it's restricted to legal wording where goods may either have its customary meaning of "movable property" as what is almost a mass noun or mean two or more singular goods [consider the phrase goods and services in the context of your quote]. Consequently the word good is used to mean "a thing" as a single entity and remove that ambiguity.
I would certainly not recommend using the singular good in normal use!
Just for the record, sense C. 7d is related, but now obsolete:
†d.singular Money. (a) great good : a great sum of money. marriage good: a marriage portion. Obs.
marriage portion n. a portion or dowry given to a bride at the time of her marriage.
Best Answer
You can treat pretty much any -ing word as countable if you want to. Whether you want to or not depends on the effect you’re striving for. There is, for example, a children’s rhyme which includes ‘We / Are tired of scoldings and sendings to bed: / Now the grown-ups shall be punished instead.’ In other contexts, sendings would sound strange, and listenings would normally sound strange to me, too. Best avoided, I'd say.