Despite how widespread the belief is that we swallow eight spiders a year in our sleep, the oft-repeated statement is actually a direct quote from 1954’s Insect Fact and Folklore, wherein the author listed it as an example of something false and silly people believe about insects.

A plurale tantum (Latin for “plural only”) is a noun that appears only in plural form and does not have a singular variant for referring to a single object. Words like “scissors”, “pants”, and “headphones” are functional examples of pluralia tantum (items that are a pair or set of something that works together). Words like “riches”, “surroundings”, and “suds” are conceptual examples: you can’t have a single “rich”, “surround”, or “sud”.