Beating You Over the Head with Subtlety

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Monies vs Money

When is it appropriate to use the term monies, and when is money better? Money is a term like water or salt or toothpaste that is never used in a singular conjugation but rather used in the plural in the sense that it is likened to be a sort of "stuff." You say, "the water flows down, not the water flow down." You would say, "the salt tastes good," but not, "the salt taste good." You say, "the toothpaste oozes out," not, "the toothpaste ooze out." This derives from the fact that you never can be considered to have just, "one water, one salt, or one toothpaste." You always have, "some water, some salt, some toothpaste."

You never have one money, you always have some money. So "monies" is a completely useless and redundant word by any application I can think of. There's never a situation where monies could be used and money couldn't be substituted.

The dictionary actually defines monies as: "a plural form of money," the problem being that money already is fucking plural.