Why is 'headquarters' always plural?

[Torsten]

Hello my friends, does anyone of you happen to know why the word headquarters does not have a singular form? Yesterday one a German asked me that question and told him I would turn to you to find the answer.

Thanks in advance,
Torsten
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[Yankee]

Hi Torsten

Headquarters is always written with an S (probably) for the same reason we write all of the following with an S:
- living quarters
- sleeping quarters
- bachelor quarters
- general quarters
- close quarters

Unfortunately, I don't know why any of those are written with an S either.

Maybe somebody else will know...

I've often told my students to think of the "quarters" in headquarters in the same sense as "offices" since the headquarters of a company is a place with a lot of offices. But that doesn't always work well since there is also the expression "head office."

But you could also look at it similarly to the way the word accommodations is used.

Amy
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Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Tamara]

[Torsten]

I think, accommodation is more often used than accommodations. But barracks is similar to headquarters although you would not say a headquarters but you do say a baracks as well as a crossroads.

I'm quite sure there some type of pattern here...
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Yankee]

Hi Torsten

I think accommodations is probably used less often in British English than in American English when you're talking about your lodgings.

But I'm also very curious about a possible explanation of why headquarters is always plural. I get this question on a regular basis and I've never been able to provide a "good" explanation.

Amy
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Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Tamara]

My diictionary gives just following examples of words of the kind - formally plural but used as singular (some are uncountable):
barracks, crossroads, headquarters, means, news, oats, series, species, works
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[Yankee]

[brian2]

from dictionary.com

quarters

n : housing available for people to live in; "he found quarters for his family"; "I visited his bachelor quarters" [syn: living quarters]

so if headquarters is a compound word built of head and quarters, it denotes the main place that is described by the word, "quarters" meaning housing, but is not necessarily more than one place.
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