grammatical number - Is "all but one" singular or plural?



Do you say “All but one person forgets something” or “All but one person forget something”?


I'm assuming that if all means five people, for example, then the example can be rewritten as Four people forget something, so the latter sentence would be correct, but I'm not sure.



Answer



Plural. Don't get confused by the word "one" popping up in there. "One" is not the subject of the sentence. The entire phrase "all but one" is the subject, and it is treated as plural because it IS plural. It's a group.


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