plur

Plur is a shorthand term that appears primarily in linguistic contexts to denote the plural category or plural forms of words across languages. It is not a universally standardized label, but rather an informal annotation found in some descriptive grammars, field notes, and corpora.

In glossing practices, plur may be used to indicate that a given form represents the plural version of a word or that a language exhibits plural agreement. However, more common conventions in many grammars use the abbreviations pl, pl., or language-specific markers to indicate plurality. The use of plur is more typical in typological surveys or inventories where multiple grammatical categories are cataloged together and a single label for plural is advantageous.

Etymology and usage notes: plur derives from the English word plural, which itself traces to Latin pluralis and Greek poluparos. In most published works, plur is not treated as a separate grammatical category but as a shorthand notation within a particular author’s annotation system. Because it is not universally standardized, readers encountering plur should rely on the surrounding linguistic context to determine its precise meaning.

Other uses: Outside linguistics, plur may appear as an acronym or code in unrelated domains, but such usage is incidental and not part of a standardized meaning. When plur appears in text, clarity depends on explicit definition within that work.

See also: plural, grammatical number, glossing conventions, pluralia tantum.