Цитаты из книги автора James Witt Sewell An English Grammar

Some words are usually singular, though they are plural in form. Examples of these are, optics, economics, physics, mathematics, politics, and many branches of learning; also news, pains (care), molasses, summons, means: as,—

FOR THE USE OF HIGH SCHOOL

point of view

Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

This is a poetic usage, though not confined to verse.

Since words alter their meaning so rapidly by a widening or narrowing of their application, we shall find numerous examples of this shifting from class to class;

common noun

In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master.—Gibbon.

The words preceded by the article a, or made plural, are still names of abstract ideas, not material things; but they widen the application to separate kinds of art or different branches of science.

Material nouns and abstract nouns are always singular.