Dear Lazyweb,
Everyone knows mailman, that friendly neighborhood character dressed in Python, who delivers your mailbox clogging maillists through sleet, hail and snow, and all other sorts of nasty weather. But what do we call them in groups?Mailman is also short for Mail Manager. It's also officially still a proper noun, as unfortunately, Mailman hasn't become the Xerox of inbox cloggers. But it's phonetically equivalent to another common English word, and shares a similar morphology. So is it mailmen or mailmans? What do you think?
(There is no wrong answer.)
3 flames:
mailmans? mailmen? mailman? (i.e. one mailman - 42 mailman)
mailman instances? mailman servers? mailman lists? mailman processes?
I'd go for mailman or mailman Xs...but I'm not a native anyway and just should STFU.
Mailmännerl? ;)
Unless you intend to create a new word (neologism), you cannot substitute a name for a noun and pluralize it.
For example, it is properly 'Mailman', and when you write it that way, it is clear you talking about a single software application, and two good usages would be:
* "... consider the various Mailman instances available ..."
* "... count your Mailman installations."
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