In basketball, football, hockey, and many other sport the teams get a set number of timeouts.
I was watching a summer league NBA game and there were some stat nerds talking and one referenced that "timeouts" was the incorrect plural form for a timeout. He said it should be times out. This to me is nonsense and hits my ears bad but a few others agreed with him. What is the plural of timeout?
Best Answer
Information from Grammarist.com:
Timeout vs. time out In American and Canadian English, timeout is one word in sports-related contexts, where it means an official pause in the action. Timeouts is its plural. In all other uses, time out is a two-word noun phrase.
I think the one guy was tweaking the other. I can get a rise out of my husband insisting that "RBIs" (runs batted in) in baseball should be "RsBI." It makes him crazy. (This was answered in the EL&U question, "In baseball, is it proper to pluralize 'RBI'?")