Plural of Mustache

Howdy, you got A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jennifer from Carlsbad.

Hi, Jennifer.

Hi, Jennifer. What’s up?

Now, I am kind of an Anglophile, as it were. I love to read old English books, old English history, you know, written as fiction or even nonfiction.

And in my travels through the books, I have come across people using the term for facial hair for a man, mustaches in the plural. And I’ve read it several times. I’ve never actually heard anyone using it when they speak, but I happen to use the term myself when speaking to a friend, and of course she was an English teacher and immediately told me that that is not the proper usage, that it is only to be used in the singular, and never in any time was it used in the plural.

And I said, I swear I have read this used this way. Granted it’s been used in, you know, olden days as it were, but I thought I had seen it. So I thought the only thing I can do is call Martha and Grant and see what the truth is.

And whose mustache or mustaches were you talking about?

I don’t remember.

No?

No. In my days I have sung madrigals, English madrigals. And so she was somebody who sang madrigals with me. So it may even have come up that possibly we were at some kind of function that was a renaissance function. And I happened to say, oh, they used to call it mustaches. And she was like, oh, no, oh, no. And so I thought, well, either I’m losing my mind or I misunderstood or she’s wrong.

Wow. One of those three options, huh?

Yes. Those are our choices. We’re all three together. So you have to save me here.

We will. We will. We can help.

Yes, yes, absolutely. It is much more British to say mustaches, plural.

You usually see it singular, right?

And another difference is, I don’t know if you noticed this, but in Britain, it’s much more common to spell it M-O-U.

Right, right.

Rather than the way we spell it here, which is M-U-S.

And is it, when it is too, is it pronounced differently? Like mustache? Is there an emphasis on a different syllable?

As far as I know, it’s the same, isn’t it? Here, we usually say mustache, right?

What did we say?

Mustache.

Mustache, right.

And there they might say mustache.

Yeah, it’s much more common to hear mustache with the emphasis on the second syllable. And usually I had read it when they were, oddly enough, it seemed like when they were complimenting or speaking. He was inordinately proud of his mustaches or something. It always seemed.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, and you always had your picture in the mind of this giant waxed kind of monstrosity on someone’s face.

Right, right.

Some very grand thing.

So do they no longer use it in Britain anymore either?

It’s very rare and it’s kind of affected. It does occasionally pop up in historical novels that people are writing when they’re trying to get the language of a different era. But most people still say mustaches. Actually, or stash or porn stash or whatever you want to call it.

Porn stash? What was that last one?

Porn stash. A porn stash is the long kind of creepy looking mustache that looks like it might be on a porn star.

I wouldn’t know.

Me neither. It’s only from my reading.

Is that what Brad Pitt is wearing now?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Oh, man.

But no, you’re right. You do see it in the older novels. I’m looking at a reference here from 1902. He twirled one mustache and then the other before he spoke again.

There you go.

So unless he’s got one on another part of his body.

Oh.

Don’t get Grant started on that.

So you can sleep better at night now, right?

Oh, good.

Good. This is probably going to get me possibly lunch. We’ll see.

Oh, that’s not bad.

That’s not bad.

That’s not bad.

Great.

All right. Well, thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Okay. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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