Singular nouns in plural form
Is the following sentence correct?
There is a woods near our house.
(I am talking about one woods, but it is a bit awkward to use "a" before "woods". Hence I am not sure about this.)
[This answer relates solely to British English. I'm not sure whether wood is used in this sense in American English.]
Chambers defines this meaning of wood as follows:
wood noun
3. (also woods) an expanse of growing trees.
showing that it can be used as singular or plural.
We would not say:
There is a woods near our house.
You could say:
There is a wood near our house.
There is a small wood near our house.
There are some woods near our house.
(This doesn't necessarily imply multiple discrete areas of woodland, but could mean the same as "a wood".)
The terminology is imprecise, but would depend, for example, on whether you are talking about :
- a single area of trees, completely separate from any other areas of trees, for example, a group of trees in an urban or barren area; or
- an area of trees on the edge of the countryside, which may merge into a larger area of woodland.
In case 1., you may well call it a wood, but in case 2., some woods would be a better description.
To summarise what others have already said in comments:
- In UK English, woods is usually a mass noun (There are (some) woods nearby). It also exists in the singular in this sense: (There is a wood nearby).
- For most Americans a wood is not used in this sense. Some Americans will say There is a woods nearby, but others say There are (some) woods nearby. I don't know if this is a regional or a personal difference.
In US English, the term woods means
an area of land covered with a thick growth of trees: Shaded from the sun, the woods were cool and quiet.
While the term is designated as a plural noun, it generally is treated as logically singular (but only when referring to a forested area, as opposed to a collection of several species of wood).
There are numerous locations in the US which include the term woods in its name
- Muir Woods
- Bretton Woods
- Bethel Woods
- Hendy Woods
The use of the singular form wood to mean a forested area is rare in US usage. For example, this ngram shows a marked dominance of the phrase into the woods over into the wood, and a quick check of the latter phrase indicates that it is usually referring to a woodworking project rather than a country walk.
While a walk in the woods would probably be more common (and perhaps more euphonic, at least to American ears), there is nothing wrong with a walk in a woods. And your example, there is a woods near our house is perfectly fine in Cambridge Massachusetts, but not in Cambridge, UK.