Plural of still-life

Despite all my training, qualifications, inbuilt pedantry etc. I think "still lifes" feels more correct. But "still life paintings" eases the pain!

I'll go with 'still lifes'...

It's a noun. It's a genre of painting or drawing, not an adjective.

An adjective that over time has become a noun perhaps? I prefer it as an adjective.

Same opinion as Greenfinch above.
This is a similar discussion tho the one about text - a noun or a verb.
This time a noun or an adjective?

I still think of it as an adjective and therefore in English it would not have a plural.

According to the Tate:

"Note the plural of still life is still lifes, and the term is not hyphenated."

www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/still-life

I'm forever cocking the whotsits up!
I think a space would work..........

Yes, I think that's what you should have done, Ash Tree. It can be fiddly - I always preview before I post when I'm doing things like that, although that doesn't guarantee I get it right...

loopylou I was putting a ^ at each end to italicise it, but I also wanted to show it was a quote, so I put speech marks at each end as well (not asterisks)
Maybe I should have put a space after the speech mark? Don't know...

AshTree it's ^ at each end not *^

No idea which form is correct but I thought still life applied to one or many

aagghh, that was supposed to be in italics, like the original post. I guess I should have put a space between " and ^ ? Too much to work out for yourself with this formatting stuff

"^Effectively it's a kind of neologism - not really "new" today, but a lot later than the original word life with its irregular plural. Neologisms almost always have regular plural and verb forms.^"

So if this is accepted as a neologism and neologisms almost always have regular plural and verb forms, then following this logic, it would be "still lifes" not "lives" which is the irregular plural of the original word.

Not to me - it doesn't sound right at all. If 'still life' is a standalone word, then 'still lifes' must be its plural.

If you look it up there is an answer as follows:

I would say still life has undergone reification, which transforms it into a "standalone word". How the subcomponent elements work grammatically doesn't automatically affect how the composite form works.

Effectively it's a kind of neologism - not really "new" today, but a lot later than the original word life with its irregular plural. Neologisms almost always have regular plural and verb forms.

I would certainly agree that using either of the words "still" or "life" on their own does not convey the intended meaning so "still life" has become the same as one word. This would make sense of "still lives" as a plural.

Ok, why not just "still life" ? Doesn't really require the plural

I don't think it's superfluous in this case to say paintings. Yes, it was obvious that's what they were but by transferring the plural to 'painting' rather than 'life' the phrase doesn't sound so clumsy.

Oddly, still-lifes sounds perfectly fine to me, and that's the one I'd go with. I think it's because I don't 'feel' the term has anything to do with life; it's just a description of a particular art form or genre. Therefore one still-life, several still-lifes.

Interesting point about qualifying the word by adding paintings, but in the context of a picture gallery, where this question arose, it looks a bit superfluous.

Both still lifes and still lives sound wrong. I'd go with still life paintings, section, etc

still-life paintings are usually of objects not people so nothing alive , the Victorians were great at dead pheasants and stuff

whats wrong with still- lives as in human lives.

I would choose janeA's method, pictures or paintings. The other sounds too clumsy.

Wikipedia says 'still-lifes', and I agree!

Still-life paintings.