It wasn't till the 1800s that the knitted thing that keeps our necks and noses warm on wintry January days came to be called a “scarf” rather than a “muffler”.
Originally, a scarf (escarpe in medieval French) was a kind of sling worn diagonally in which pilgrims carried the alms they begged on their way to a shrine. When the word came into English as “scarf” in the 1500s, it was used for a diagonal sash worn across the chest by military officers – now seen only decoratively in dress uniform but formerly a practical accessory for carrying things.
The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry dating from 1910 which lists scarfs before scarves as the plural, has this to say about the plural:
"The original plural form scarfs has never gone out of use; but from the beginning of the 18th cent. the form scarves (on the analogy of halves, etc.) has been common, and in London commercial use it appeared to have become universal in the early 20th cent. No other noun of other than native origin had this change of f into v in the plural."Personally I would only use scarves, and some searches in corpora show that scarves outnumbers scarfs in a ratio of about 20 to 1 in North American English and 35 to 1 in British English. But I'm curious to know what you would use. Let me know in the comments!
Some of you will be wondering where the verb scarf (eat) comes from. This is a fairly recent addition to English, dating from the 1960s, and is a variant of "scoff", the origin of which is unclear.
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"Scarves" only.
ReplyDeleteNow if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go scarf down some breakfast ...
I'm with Scott - 'scarves' only. I was also going to mention a person 'scarfs' down which may warm you up if it's porridge, just as a scarf warms you up, but the two words are very different in meaning.
ReplyDeleteNorman
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI didn't know (among other things) about the existence of a regular plural for "scarf", but I was thinking there was a general principle that caused this switch (f to v) in passing to plurals. Or is it that (past) usage is left to decide ?
On the other hand, I have often wondered why "scarpa" for Italian ... shoes ?
Thanks.
I would only use "scarves" for the plural. I didn't know that there was a plural form "scarfs" until I read this post. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteScarves. It works better in the mouth than scarfs, where the juxtaposition of f and s is awkward. Are there any English plurals ending in fs? We have quite a few ves endings: halves, loaves, calves. But the plural of laugh is just laughs. (Smile emoji here.)
ReplyDeletecoughs, toffs, staffs, bailiffs, puffs, bluffs, cliffs, cuffs, duffs....
DeleteGoodness. Please be sure to be aware of a new face covering made by a company named ¨Buff". It produces the eponymous "Buff" face covering. The usual reference is "I love your Buff. I wish I had more Buffs." The scarf wearing crowd can now cower behind their masks.
ReplyDeleteI would use scarves and I have a lot of them. I would use scarfs as a verb although it's not a word I would use very often.
ReplyDeleteI alway use "scarves", but I have a fashion booklet published in New York in 1985 titled, Sensational Scarfs...44 Ways to Turn a Scarf into a Fabulous Look. I always assumed it was edited by someone who knew more about fashion than grammar!
ReplyDeleteScarves...but I’m still stuck on “bananas.” 🤣
ReplyDeleteI would usually think of scarfs as the 3rd person singular for the verb and scarves as the plural for the noun.
ReplyDeleteI can't quite figure out how to wear a banana.
Scarves all the way. I had never heard the word "scarf" instead of "scoff" before I came to Canada from England in the late '70s.
ReplyDeleteWhat, if any, connection is there between "scoff" as in gobble and "scoff" as in ridicule?
there is no connection and they are both of equally obscure origin
DeleteScarves. Until now I would have thought scarfs was incorrect.
ReplyDeleteWe do also have the plural pair "dwarfs" and "dwarves," tho I don't know whether that represents a change of f > v
ReplyDeletedwarves is a fairly recent development. When the OED edited its entry for dwarf in 1897 they gave only "dwarfs", although there is in fact some evidence for "dwarves" from earlier in the 19th century. But not much, and none before 1800. Although "dwarf" is an Anglo-Saxon word, it didn't end with an f in Anglo-Saxon times, but with a g.
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