“es”. ies Nouns ending in “y” preceded by a vowel form their plurals by add- ing “s”. s Spies Looking For Pennies 9 Word Spelling Sheet Spelling sheet for collection of 9 words of either plural “s” or plural “ies”. WORD PLURAL WORD PLURAL ...
ending in s, sh, ss, z, x or ch, add -es to facilitate pronunciation gas > gases dish > dishes boss > bosses box > boxes watch > watches To form the plural of nouns ending in y preceded by a consonant, change the y to an i and then add -es lady > ladies baby > babies ...
So what's actually changing? Plurals of three or four letters that end in S or ES are never going to be the answer. You can still use them as guesses to narrow things down, however, if you like. "That is, the answer will never be FOXES or SPOTS, but it might be GEESE or FUNGI...