Language question: Why has "vinyls" become a word?

I’m saying that turning the adjective “vinyl” into a noun that can be pluralized violates the instinctive sense that English doesn’t do that: I wouldn’t tell someone that “I bought five cotton shirts” by shortening it to “I bought five cottons.” You might say “I bought five of the cotton” with “shirts” or “ones” understood as the omitted plural noun that “cotton” is modifying. But if you wouldn’t say “I bought five cottons shirts,” and no one would say that in English, you don’t magically make the the adjective plural because the noun it modifies is omitted. Modern English doesn’t make adjectives plural to agree with plural nouns: we don’t say “I bought five reds shirts,” although in French one would say “J’ai acheté cinq chemises rouges,” with “rouge” made plural in that sentence to agree in number with the noun it modifies.

 

I think I'm going to bring back the word "Victrola".

 

After Webster's added another definition to the word "literally" to also mean something "figuratively", all bets were off with the English language, and you can now make up your own damn words to mean whatever the hell you want!

 

Except that it does do that, and it's not that unusual.

 

It's the same in applied engineering. People who speak the language always refered to megawatts or megabyts when quantifying the term as 2 meg, as an example. And now cable companies and internet providers refer to everything as megs, which drives me nuts. I've been using meg, even in a plural sense, for over 30 years in professional circles, yet, away from the job, I always get corrected by some ignoramous with "it's megs" because he heard it on a commercial once? The pride of the ignorant wants to be protected at all costs. Gimme a break! Step into my world and try that one.

 

Vinyl has never been an adjective, always a noun

 

Yeah, a banger is a sausage. ;o)

 

The reason “RBIs” is wrong is not that “the final letter is the noun,” it’s that the first word of the acronym or abbreviation is the noun, and “batted in” is an adjectival phrase that follows it. Again, no one would ever say “Mike Trout is on pace for 120 runs batted ins this season.” When we abbreviate the correct plural “runs batted in” to “RBI,” the “R” stands for the plural noun “runs” when we are talking about more than one run batted in. There’s no need to make the abbreviation a double plural.

We see this principle in effect, ironically enough, on record labels that state “33 1/3 RPM,” not “33 1/3 RPMs.” In this case “RPM” stands for “revolutions per minute,” and there is no need, reason, or excuse to make the abbreviation into a double plural by saying or writing “33 1/3 RPMs.” People would certainly laugh at anyone who said “33 1/3 revolutions per minutes.”

 

I believe it was [and this is totally anecdotal, btw] something that crept into use with an ironic twist of "I call them vinyls even though I know vinyl is plural".

That's the inflection I first heard when my son [who is now 21] started referring to "vinyls" several years back. Then the ironic tone fell by the wayside and now it is a thing....

 

"Leaves" should apply to the former Montreal team. ;o)

 

Not forgetting - this, that, these and those.

 

My friends in Italy laughed at how we say "lasagna" as a singular. (It's plural "lasagne" in Italian.)

They joked that American lasagna is in the singular because it's a singular cheesy glob.

 

AAVE is a variety of American English with consistent rules and vocabulary. I didn't say all Black people in the USA speak it.

 

The "maths" include:
Algebra
Trigonometry
Geometry
Calculus
Differential Equations

 

You misunderstood the chain of my thoughts.

 

To which I agree wholeheartedly. But still language evolves...

 

Good for them.

 

It’s an adjective when it’s used in a sentence such as “She wore a vinyl raincoat” or “I bought a vinyl record.” Turning “vinyl records” into “vinyls” makes as little sense as turning “compact discs” into “compacts.” No one would say “I bought five Steve Hoffman compacts” or “The black triangle Abbey Road is my favorite compact.”

 

When we were kids, my Dad always called records "LP's"
When he heard me call them "albums", he told me that when he was young an "album" meant a book of 78's (usually they came in "4's")
An "EP" to my Dad meant a 4 track 45 rpm single that was popular in the 50's.
He also used to buy 10" 33 rpm records in the 50's that had maybe 4 songs per side.

"Vinyls" has always bugged me. It's something kids still say a lot.

 

"I laundered my linens"
"The glass is half-full"
"I put on my leathers"

It's commonplace in all kinds of English.

 

You missed one.

"who's first language"

 

^^^ "Millennial" used to be an adjective only, too.

 

That's why we ended up calling long-playing records "albums" — because the format replaced "albums" of 78s.

 

We called 'singles' "45's" when we were kids but then that term seemed to go away.

 

Like the word "meme," it didn't arise organically; it was coined. Before Howe & Strauss published Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, the generation was known as "Gen Y."

This is why I think my son's generation won't end up calling themselves "Gen Z." Too derivative.