There were things his grandchildren, in turn, should know. Yet he hesitated. How do you tell your children they are progenies of the self-proclaimed inventor of Manhattan clam chowder? (The New York Times)
Oxford Dictionaries say "progeny" is a noun
treated as singular or plural, but on Internet I found a number of occurrences of "progenies" and, hence, a doubt arose to my mind: is it entirely wrong pluralize "progeny"?
Best Answer
I agree that your citation sounds strange; at least, it does to my ear. Reading that I almost wonder whether the author hasn’t somehow conflated progeny and prodigy, since the latter’s plural form is unremarkable.
However, digging deeper, one finds that the OED entry for progeny, last updated in 2007, makes no mention one way or the other. It gives as its sense 1a
a definition that is already in the plural, but which admits a singular sense “occasionally”. Sense 1b is more figurative:
And is still plural, and gives this citation of progeny itself taking plural concordance:
However, down under sense 1d:
We find that there is indeed an inflected plural version — progenies — given as an example:
So it appears that when dealing with people, progeny is taken as a plural with some use as a singular, but when used in a genetic sense, it can occasionally be taken as a count noun that inflects regularly.