ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by livestock. Don't worry. The animals involved

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were free range and grass fed, and the loving farmer read them bedtime stories every night.

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What should replace the underlined words below?

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Either the cow and the bull or the ram and the ewe are my prize teams.

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Don't sweat it if this one is a little confusing.

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It's tricky because it involves a few different rules about singular and plural subjects.

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But never fear, we'll untangle this mess.

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The conjunction "and" always glues together two things, so we're dealing with two individual

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groups: "the cow and the bull" and "the ram and the ewe."

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Quick tip: cows, bulls, rams, and ewes don't like it when you glue them together.

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However, the format of the sentence is "either-or," which means that the subject is singular despite

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the amount of livestock involved.

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This makes both (A) and (B) incorrect, because they use the plural "are" instead of the singular

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"is."

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Once we know the verb, we know (C) is incorrect because "team" is a collective noun that can

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include both a cow and a bull, or a ram and a ewe.

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Or a boy snake and a girl snake for that matter.

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We've now eliminated everything but (D), which gets its tenses right, making it the correct

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answer.

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Hm, now we're wondering, why aren't there fancy words that distinguish boy snakes from

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girl snakes?

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