Talk:Disciplinary Action/Disciplinary Office/First Week/Perl/PJs/Wet

Reading back over this, I thought about saying something the 1st time and I should have, not sure why I didn't. At any rate, once again, the term "Pajamas" and "PJs" are always treated as pluralized with the exception of if you are talking about a singular "pajama" covered person, body, or body part. Or, if you are talking about it in the abstract, such as "Pearl was issued the pajama punishment." Outside of those two scenarios, pajamas are always treated as plural in the same way that pants are plural. That means not only pluralizing it by adding the s at the end, but also using plural speech in connection with anything that refers to the pajamas. Jemini (talk) 07:02, 16 November 2017 (CET)

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Pants are plural!!?? English continues to baffle me. Thanks for taking the time to give me these gems of knowledge. I'll try to correct this and stop making this mistake in the future. --Tod Naturlich (talk) 07:33, 16 November 2017 (CET)

While fixing all instances of a singular "PJ" or "pajama", I found that you had already given me this advice before, including the mention that pants are plural. Please don't take that as me not paying attention, I honestly forgot about it until I read it again right now. I do appreciate you helping me improve my English, and I'm sorry I made you repeat yourself. I promise I'll try to pay more attention in the future. In my defense, I was in the middle of a stressing external review and was distracted by it. --Tod Naturlich (talk) 08:07, 16 November 2017 (CET)

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It's all a bunch of very strange stuff in the history of how the language developed back when the items of clothing were first introduced hundreds of years ago. To put it in a highly simplified nut-shell, pants have 2 legs and this got people back then referring to them in the plural. Meanwhile, Pajamas worn by aldults are often made up of 2 or more articles of clothing, at the very least a shirt and pair of pants. As such, the two articles of clothing got collectively referred to as "Pajamas." This is also where the abstract reference to pajamas being singular comes from, because if you specify which part of the pajamas it is then you can also say something like "a pajama shirt," or "pajama pants." So, PJs can be used in the singular if you add on a qualifier like that to it. They are pants, but they are also used for sleeping so they are a pajama item. As for kids' pajamas, the proper term (that nobody ever uses) would be a "pajama onesie," but since most people don't like using more words than necessary they just refer to pajama onesies as pluralized pajamas as though they were made up of 2 articles of clothing as well just to make things easier.

TL;DR Pajamas can be used in the singular but only if there is some kind of qualifier attached to it. People are lazy and don't want to use those qualifiers, so the standard lazy use of the language just makes all references to pajamas plural so those qualifiers don't have to be used. Jemini (talk) 08:40, 16 November 2017 (CET)

Actually, the first "pants" consisted of leggings that tied to a belt under a tunic (my early morning, pre-coffee brain wants to call them brie's. Not sure that's right though). I think that's the origin of them being pluralised and after they were joined together with a seat and crotch, calling them a pair was just continued) --Notsooldpervert (talk) 13:56, 16 November 2017 (CET)

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Ok, a bit more on "Pajamas" being plural, that does not just mean adding an "s" to the end of "pajama." Pajamas are plural in every way, which means you treat it gramatically as a plural word. For instance, I see you dropping the term "a pajamas" a lot, that is not correct gramatically. It would either be "your pajamas," "those pajamas," "some pajamas," or "a set of pajamas" where appropriate. "A pajamas" is not correct, because the adverb "a" is singular. "A set of pajamas" works for a single pair of pajamas because it is a pluralized set, but it is only one set. "A couple of guys," for instance, also uses this concept. "A couple of guys" describes 2 guys, but they are a single couple. Jemini (talk) 04:27, 20 November 2017 (CET)

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I just can’t win against the pajamas. As soon as I can I’ll correct what errors I can find. Thanks for helping me. --Tod Naturlich (talk) 07:53, 21 November 2017 (CET)

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Just re-red my message and realized I made an error.

["A set of pajamas" works for a single pair of pajamas because it is a pluralized set, but it is only one set.]

There is no such thing as "a pair of pajamas." This line should have read "A set of pajamas" works for a single shirt-pants set because it is a pluralized set, but it is only one set.

The pajamas are even throwing me off now, lol XD. Jemini (talk) 17:04, 21 November 2017 (CET)

EDIT again. One last point of clarification, and I think this ought to be the last one unless and until I see the stupid PJs giving you a hard time again despite all this. As I said before about the singular use of "Pajama" needing to specify whether it's a pajama shirt or pajama pants, whereas the plural use of "Pajamas" refers to the shirt and pants together, again the reason "Pajamas" is always plural has more to do with laziness than anything else. If someone were only wearing a pajama shirt and nothing on the lower body, either they are in their underwear or nude from the waist down, the technically correct thing to say would be that they are in a "pajama shirt" singular. However, 90+% of English speakers will just call that "Pajamas" as well out of laziness because they don't want to go to the extra effort of specifying "Pajama shirt." So, since that use of the language is so common, while "pajama shirt" may be the most accurate term to use, just calling it "pajamas" plural despite it being only one pajama item also counts as correct. (And if the lazy pluralization is in effect, it would also be treated as plural in every way and not just by having that "s" added to it. The only difference would be that calling it "a set of pajamas" would no longer be correct. All the other terms such as "his/her pajamas" are still correct though.) Jemini (talk) 22:19, 21 November 2017 (CET)