“A growing finance firm is looking for a new premise for its much bigger workforce“
That was the headline, on a major newspaper website, for a report about a business looking for bigger offices. The firm was not looking for a new idea for its employees.
Another report said “Unsafe conditions” of the building have “slowed the physical investigation of the premise.”
In another instance, according to several newspapers and online sites, after a fire in which several members of a family were killed, a fire officer explained that 25 firefighters worked hard to recover and rescue five casualties from the premise.
A little later he said “they were aware family members were in the premise and they went in wearing breathing apparatus” .
The use, or misuse I should say, by the fire officer and the various newspapers, of the word “premise” illustrates some of the difficulties which people can have with English plurals.
What the fire officer meant when he used the word “premise” was “house” or “property”. What he should have said was “premises”.
In English many a noun can be made into a plural by the addition of “s” at the end. But this is not always the rule.
“Premise” means an assumption, a proposition or idea; “premises” means place, property, site.
“Premises” is one of those nouns in English which exist only in the plural form. They have no singular version. Other examples include thanks, series, binoculars, species, oats, pants, trousers, shorts, pliers, scissors, credentials …
Some of them, such as binoculars, trousers, shorts, pliers and scissors, can be preceded by “pair of” to indicate a single occurrence: a pair of trousers, a pair of binoculars.
Whatstheword 