Defending plurality

More intellectual nitpicking:

Someone had brought Scrabble to this afternoon’s family picnic, and the women who were forming a game needed a fourth player, so my mom decided to join in, on the condition that I would help her out as needed. At one point, I suggested that she add an S to the word “heaven,” which was already on the board. This was met with objection by one of the women.

“You can’t make it plural. There’s only one ‘heaven.'”

Well. Maybe I should add here that English is none of the players’ native language? Anyway, she was obviously speaking with a capital H. I had neither a dictionary nor the energy to get into a whole discussion on secular versus religious meanings of “heaven“–the afternoon heat can just sap all the semantic enthusiasm right out of you–so in the seeming interest of general picnic peace, diplomacy, and bonhomie, I let it go.

But I just have to state for the record: I was right. And let this be a lesson to you all: carry a dictionary upon your person at all times. You laugh now, but you never know when you’ll have to defend an obscure (though in this case, fairly common) inflection. Heh.