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Astormwithskin Posted 10 years ago
Vocabulary
media is or are?
Hello, I have seen that media sometimes takes a plural verb and sometimes a singular one. Could somebody explain when we use one or the other? Thank you very much
Top answer
Strictly, media is the plural of medium , but in practice it is often treated as a singular noun. Here is what the Online Oxford dictionary has to say: The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium. The traditional view is that it should therefore be treated as a plural noun in all its senses in English and be used with a plural rather than a singular verb: the media have not followed the reports (rather than ‘has’).
- Strictly, media is the plural of medium , but in practice it is often treated as a singular noun.
- Here is what the Online Oxford dictionary has to say: The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium.
- The traditional view is that it should therefore be treated as a plural noun in all its senses in English and be used with a plural rather than a singular verb: the media have not followed the reports (rather than ‘has’).
- In practice, in the sense ‘television, radio, and the press collectively’, it behaves as a collective noun (like staff or clergy, for example), which means that it is now acceptable in standard English for it to take either a singular or a plural verb.
- The word is also increasingly used in the plural form medias, as if it had a conventional singular form media, especially when referring to different forms of new media, and in the sense ‘the material or form used by an artist’: there were great efforts made by the medias of the involved countries about 600 works in all genres and medias were submitted for review.
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2 Answers
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Strictly, media is the plural of medium, but in practice it is often treated as a singular noun. Here is what the Online Oxford dictionary has to say:
The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium. The traditional view is that it should therefore be treated as a plural noun in all its senses in English and be used with a plural rather than a singular verb:
The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium. The traditional view is that it should therefore be treated as a plural noun in all its senses in English and be used with a plural rather than a singular verb:
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