[kisito]

I always thought "Equipment" never takes an "s", but all over the web, people add "s" to mean plural. Even my computer does not show that "equipments" is a mistake. When did "equipment" start to take "s" for plural? Which is right? " We have several sporting equipment. " or We have several sporting equipments." What do you use?
I know we can say "several pieces of sporting equipment", but I don't want a long sentence.

[clivehawkins]

It's news to me too.

I've never used equipment in the plural form, and several sporting equipments sounds horrible.
I think a variety of equipment probably best conveys the idea of plural in this case.

Any other suggestions?

[mesmark]

same here. equipments sounds wrong.

We have a lot of sporting equipment.

We have sporting equipment for all needs.

We have all kinds of sporting equipment.

[gaijinguy]

I'm pretty sure equipments is wrong. Sorry, I don't think there's a choice but to go with "pieces of sporting equipment," or, "several different types of sporting equipment." Good luck just the same

[yucatan]

I agree, equipment never has an 's' , but maybe in some British dialects???I'm from Yorkshire and have never heard 'equipments'.

[kiokusou]

'Equipments' is the default plural in Filipino English. I was appalled when I first noticed it here, but I started thinking it was old-fashioned US English (as much of Filipino English is...). 'Fruits', 'stuffs' and 'cereals' are also used. (As in, 'Would you like some cereals?')

My thinking is that much older English did do this at one stage, and phased out of common usage during the 60s. I have read these plurals in older writing before.

I used to try and explain 'countable' and 'non-countable', but I'm so used to it these days, I'm not even sure how that works anymore...

[Beatrix]

I hear "fruits" a lot. Some dictionaries for 'plural of fruit' have both 'fruit' and 'fruits', as equally used forms

[susan53]

That's a bit different though. Fruits can be used in the same way as eg wines or cheeses to mean types of - as in this recipe for Barbecued Fruits

Compare : I know some Italian wines which are just as high quality as similar French wines.

And although I was all set to say that equipment couldn't be used like this, or in any other plural sense, googling it I've just found :

Himech Equipments is a leader in the design of oilfield equipment ...
Anti climb guards ltd (Vandgard) provides rotating anti climb equipments in UK ( United Kingdom) for industrial (commercial) as well as domestic premises.
Artillery Equipments of the Napoleonic Wars

All from UK sites. So there you go ...

[Beatrix]

incredible. susan, how do you explain it?

[mesmark]

Quote Beatrix

incredible. susan, how do you explain it?

I'd explain it by saying 'use' is the rule. Grammar is an attempt to find the patterns of a language and explain it. Grammar isn't a rule that language obeys. So, if we see such usage you can define it as OK (descriptive) or shun such usage (prescriptivist), but it's not going to stop the change.

200,000 friends of mine and me think you should just tell them it's OK.

Just tell them that some people say it that way, and some people don't. So, it's not a big deal. 'Equipments' is used by some and it's understandable. I'd say let it fly.

[susan53]

I agree 100% with Mark. That's why I always go to Google or a concordancer before I discuss language. We need to know how people are using language - which may change not only from region to region but also from year to year. I recently picked up Chomsky's Aspects and reread it. That's only from 1965 but there were one or two phrases that sounded absolutely archaic to me. Or think of listening to news reports from the 40s and 50s and compare them with current reports. There's a huge difference.

My surprise over equipments was not that I should argue that it shouldn't be used countably, but that I really didn't think it was. But yet again, Google proved me wrong ....

[Beatrix]

yes, I agree with you that we shouldn't insist on the word's being used in only one way. I also thought that nobody uses 'equipments'