Editing English plurals (section)

=== Adjectives as collective plurals ===
Certain adjectives can be used, uninflected, as plurals denoting people of the designated type. For example, ''unemployed'' and ''homeless'' can be used to mean "unemployed people" and "homeless people", as in ''There are two million unemployed.'' Such usage is common with the definite article, to denote people of a certain type generally: ''the unemployed'', ''the homeless''.

This is common with certain nationalities: ''the British'', ''the Dutch'', ''the English'', ''the French'', ''the Irish'', ''the Spanish'', ''the Welsh'', and those where the adjective and noun singular and plural are identical anyway, including ''the Swiss'' and those in ''-ese'' (''the Chinese'' etc.). In the case of most nationalities, however, the plural of the [[demonym]] noun is used for this purpose: ''(the) Americans'', ''(the) Poles''. Cases where the adjective formation is possible, but the noun provides a commonly used alternative, include ''the Scottish'' (or more commonly ''(the) Scots''), ''the Danish'' (or ''(the) Danes''), ''the Finnish'' (or ''(the) Finns''), ''the Swedish'' (or ''(the) Swedes'').

The noun is normally used anyway when referring to specific sets of people (''five Frenchmen'', ''a few Spaniards''), although the adjective may be used especially in case of a group of mixed or unspecified sex, if the demonym nouns are gender-specific: ''there were five French'' (or ''French people'') ''in the bar'' (if neither ''Frenchmen'' or ''Frenchwomen'' would be appropriate).