Why is lives the plural form of life?
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In Old English, people used to pronounce the F sound as a V when it was surrounded by two vowels. That was pretty much true across the board, and it also happened to the TH sound, turning it into a “DH” sound (i.e. from the TH in ether to the TH in either).
A lot of words in the singular ended with a consonant, but their plural forms had a suffix that started with a vowel. So, the F was word-final in the singular, and between two vowels in the plural, where it turned into a V, just like it would anywhere else.
Eventually, people learned to associate the V pronunciation with the plural and just memorized it as something you do with plurals in English. Later, the rule that converted F to V disappeared, but we retained the F to V in a small set of words. (The vowel in the plural also disappeared.)
The same thing happens to a lot of verbs, too, for the same reason. Compare “wreath” to the verb “wreathe”, or the noun “house” (which ends in an “S” sound) to the verb “house” (which ends in a Z sound).
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