Hello my friends, does anyone of you happen to know why the word headquarters does not have a singular form? Yesterday one a German asked me that question and told him I would turn to you to find the answer.
Thanks in advance,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC short conversations: Customer calls to place an order for dog food.[YSaerTTEW443543]
Hi Torsten
Headquarters is always written with an S (probably) for the same reason we write all of the following with an S:
Unfortunately, I don’t know why any of those are written with an S either. 8)
Maybe somebody else will know…
I’ve often told my students to think of the “quarters” in headquarters in the same sense as “offices” since the headquarters of a company is a place with a lot of offices. But that doesn’t always work well since there is also the expression “head office.” 
But you could also look at it similarly to the way the word accommodations is used.
Amy
and barracks? 
I think, accommodation is more often used than accommodations. But barracks is similar to headquarters although you would not say a headquarters but you do say a baracks as well as a crossroads.
I’m quite sure there some type of pattern here…[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC short conversations: Talking about expense reports[YSaerTTEW443543]
Hi Torsten
I think accommodations is probably used less often in British English than in American English when you’re talking about your lodgings. :lol:
But I’m also very curious about a possible explanation of why headquarters is always plural. I get this question on a regular basis and I’ve never been able to provide a “good” explanation.
Amy
My diictionary gives just following examples of words of the kind - formally plural but used as singular (some are uncountable):
barracks, crossroads, headquarters, means, news, oats, series, species, works
Hi Pamela
The words you’ve listed have additional differences. Although they all end with an S and are seen as single things, the usage of the verb isn’t always singular. For example, news is always used with a singular verb, but headquarters can take either a singular or plural verb.
To talk about the place where a company’s main offices are, you’d usually hear the plural verb:
“The headquarters are located in New York.”
You’d be more likely to hear ‘headquarters’ used with a singular verb when referring to what the people who work there do (at least in AmE :lol:):
“Headquarters is pressuring us to reduce costs.”
Barracks, means and works are also used with both singular and plural forms of a verb.
Amy
from dictionary.com
quarters
n : housing available for people to live in; “he found quarters for his family”; “I visited his bachelor quarters” [syn: living quarters]
so if headquarters is a compound word built of head and quarters, it denotes the main place that is described by the word, “quarters” meaning housing, but is not necessarily more than one place.