200 cattle or 200 head of cattle?
I know "200 head of cattle" is correct. Can you also say "200 cattle"?
Top answer
Yes, you can. "Cattle" is one of a few plural-only nouns which cannot be used with low numerals, but can be used with high round numerals, and hence sometimes called 'quasi-count nouns'. So we can have "Ed has two hundred cattle", or "Ed has a thousand cattle", but not *"Ed has five cattle", or *"Ed has twelve cattle"; instead we'd say "Ed has five head of cattle".
- Yes, you can.
- "Cattle" is one of a few plural-only nouns which cannot be used with low numerals, but can be used with high round numerals, and hence sometimes called 'quasi-count nouns'.
- So we can have "Ed has two hundred cattle", or "Ed has a thousand cattle", but not *"Ed has five cattle", or *"Ed has twelve cattle"; instead we'd say "Ed has five head of cattle".
- "Police" is another decent example of a quasi-count noun: we can say "five hundred police arrived", but not *"four police arrived"; instead we'd say "four policeman/police officers arrived".
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Yes, you can.
"Cattle" is one of a few plural-only nouns which cannot be used with low numerals, but can be used with high round numerals, and hence sometimes called 'quasi-count nouns'. So we can have "Ed has two hundred cattle", or "Ed has a thousand cattle", but not *"Ed has five cattle", or *"Ed has twelve cattle"; instead we'd say "Ed has five head of cattle".
"Police" is ano
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