Plural of “tomato”

The plural of tomato is tomatoes.

Why

Spanish gave English 'tomato' by way of 'tomate,' itself borrowed from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word 'tomatl,' and once the word settled into English it fell in with a broader group of long-established -o-ending nouns that mark their plural with -es rather than a bare -s — so 'tomatoes,' never 'tomatos.'

"Tomato" is botanically a fruit (specifically a berry) but is legally and culinarily classified as a vegetable in the United States, following an 1893 Supreme Court ruling (Nix v. Hedden) that settled an import-tariff dispute by focusing on how the food is used at the table rather than on strict botanical classification — a genuinely documented legal quirk unrelated to the word's grammar but frequently brought up alongside it. Culinary tradition has attached deep regional identity to the tomato despite its relatively recent arrival in European cooking — Italian cuisine, now almost synonymous with tomato-based sauces, didn't widely adopt the fruit until well after its introduction from the Americas in the 16th century, a slow culinary adoption unrelated to grammar but relevant to why the plural "tomatoes" appears so constantly across so many now-classic national cuisines.

Usage note

There's no reliable shortcut for predicting -oes versus -os across English -o nouns generally, but "tomatoes" itself is fully settled and essentially universal, unlike some other -o words on this list ("volcano," "zero") that still genuinely accept both endings as standard.

"Tomato" also became a famous example in a 20th-century song lyric about pronunciation differences between American and British English ("you say tomato, I say tomahto"), a playful reference to regional accent variation entirely separate from, and unrelated to, the word's settled spelling and plural form. Home gardening guides distinguish determinate tomatoes, which ripen all at once, from indeterminate varieties that produce continuously through the season, technical horticultural vocabulary that has nothing to do with the plural itself but explains why gardening writing uses "tomatoes" so constantly across such a wide range of practical advice. Botanically classifying the tomato as a fruit rather than a vegetable is a point of ongoing casual debate at dinner tables, even though the legal and culinary consensus firmly favors treating it as a vegetable in everyday cooking contexts.

Common real mistakes

Writing "tomatos" is a common spelling mistake, made famous by the same 1992 political spelling-bee moment that also popularized "potatoe" as a punchline, and it remains one of the more frequently misspelled plurals in everyday writing despite the underlying rule being simple to state once learned. A further point some writers overlook: "tomato sauce" and "tomato paste," both fixed compounds, keep "tomato" singular within the compound regardless of how many tomatoes were actually used to make the product, following the same modifier pattern seen in "potato chip" and many other food compounds.

The wider pattern

Several other well-established -o nouns share this same -oes ending, among them 'potato' and 'hero' — words that entered English early enough, and became common enough in everyday speech, to fall under the older -oes convention, unlike more recently borrowed or technical -o words such as 'photo' or 'piano,' which simply take a bare -s.

Examples

• She grew several varieties of tomatoes in her backyard garden.
• The sauce recipe calls for four ripe tomatoes.
• Both tomatoes were perfectly ripe by the end of summer.
• The market sold heirloom tomatoes alongside the usual varieties.
• He sliced the tomatoes thinly for the sandwich.
• Farmers rotate tomatoes with other crops to reduce soil disease.
• The salad was topped with fresh cherry tomatoes.
• She canned dozens of tomatoes at the end of the growing season.
• The greenhouse produced tomatoes year-round despite the cold winters.
• A single vine can produce dozens of tomatoes in one season.
• The greenhouse produced tomatoes well into late autumn this year.
• She canned tomatoes from the garden to use throughout the winter.
• The salsa recipe combined diced tomatoes with fresh cilantro and lime.
• Two tomatoes were left on the vine after the first frost.