Q.
I have been involved in a debate with some friends recently, to almost a comical degree, about a certain grammatical topic. The debate stems forms words like glasses or pants and whether to use is or are with them to imply possession. (i.e. My pants is on the table or My pants are on the table.) My friends contend that pants or glasses implies a pair and therefore a pair is a singular group. While I understand the reasoning behind it, I have always accepted the correct form to be the later of the two. Could you please help us out? I would greatly appreciate it.
A.
My pants ARE on the table, and so ARE my glasses.
If one wears glasses, after all, there are two lenses, so we need a plural there. We can say that we wear pants, but we also call them a PAIR of pants. At one time there was a singular form of the word (pant). One would wear a pant on the right leg and another pant on the left leg. For a long time, however, these two garments have become part of one garment, but we still use the plural for the pair.
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