Learn English – Singular nouns in plural form

grammatical-numbernouns

Is the following sentence correct?

There is a woods near our house.

(I am talking about one woods, but it is a bit awkward to use "a" before "woods". Hence I am not sure about this.)

Best Answer

[This answer relates solely to British English. I'm not sure whether wood is used in this sense in American English.]

Chambers defines this meaning of wood as follows:

wood noun
3. (also woods) an expanse of growing trees.

showing that it can be used as singular or plural.

We would not say:

There is a woods near our house.

You could say:

There is a wood near our house.
There is a small wood near our house.
There are some woods near our house.
(This doesn't necessarily imply multiple discrete areas of woodland, but could mean the same as "a wood".)

The terminology is imprecise, but would depend, for example, on whether you are talking about :

  1. a single area of trees, completely separate from any other areas of trees, for example, a group of trees in an urban or barren area; or
  2. an area of trees on the edge of the countryside, which may merge into a larger area of woodland.

In case 1., you may well call it a wood, but in case 2., some woods would be a better description.

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