Word.ws English Dictionary

duale tantum

UK/dʊˈɑːleɪˈtæntəm/

duale tantum noun: a noun (or specific sense of a noun) that can only occur in the dual, and which lacks forms for singular, plural, and any other number.

Noun

duale tantum (plural dualia tantum)

  1. A noun (or specific sense of a noun) that can only occur in the dual, and which lacks forms for singular, plural, and any other number.
    • The second -c- refers to icgaʹkwal “eel” (duale tantum), a form used alongside of igaʹkwal (masc.).1909, Edward Sapir, Wishram Texts, page 4, footnote 1
    • The only natural-pair noun consistently preferring the dual over the plural, ὄσσε, virtually a duale tantum, refers to the eyes not as mere sense-organs but as ‘windows of the soul’.1989, Frans Plank, “On Humboldt on the Dual” in Linguistic Categorization, eds. R. Corrigan, F.R. Eckman, and M.P. Noonan, § 2.5, 309

Forms of duale tantum

pluraldualia tantum

Origin of duale tantum

From Latin duāle tantum (“dual as such; dual only”), from duāle + tantum.

Questions about duale tantum

What does duale tantum mean?
Duale tantum means a noun (or specific sense of a noun) that can only occur in the dual, and which lacks forms for singular, plural, and any other number.
What part of speech is duale tantum?
Duale tantum is a noun.
How do you pronounce duale tantum?
Duale tantum is pronounced /dʊˈɑːleɪˈtæntəm/ (UK).
What is the plural of duale tantum?
The plural of duale tantum is dualia tantum.

Words near duale tantum in the dictionary

  1. dual-uses
  2. dual-voltage
  3. Duala
  4. dualband
  5. dualboot
  6. duale tantum
  7. dualed
  8. dualia tantum
  9. dualic
  10. dualie
  11. dualies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: duale tantum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “duale tantum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/duale_tantum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.