Mosquitoes vs Mosquitos

Often times at the office we get emails and marketing copy with the wording of “mosquitoes” and sometimes “mosquitos”. It is one of those interesting words to tackle when making it plural. If you are like me you will stare at certain words and wonder, ‘did I spell that correctly?’.

So I thought I would take a moment to share a bit about mosquitoes vs mosquitos.

Seems to be that this problem surfaces because of our English language’s odd nature when pluralizing words that end with the letter ‘O’.

The plural of potato is potatoes. Same problem with tomato and tomatoes. For some reason that ‘tomatoes’ looks odd to me so I might double check myself or just roll on.

If spell-check then lets a ‘tomatos’ reference ride then so will I.

The answer to our mystery is not in an either/or, but it is solved with a both/and.

Simply put, you are okay to use either spelling of mosquitoes or mosquitos.

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary when using the plural of mosquito you can use mosquitoes or mosquitos without being called out by the grammar police.

This is good because the grammar police can be a real pain. And if you see the grammar police giving anyone the shakedown about using mosquitoes vs mosquitos in the wrong context, well you just send them over here to Johnson Pest Control.