There’s no such word as “tomatos.”
The plural of tomato is tomatoes. Every time. With an e before the s. If you’ve ever second-guessed yourself in front of a grocery list, you can stop. Tomatoes is right, tomatos is wrong, and it’s not a close call.
But the reason behind it is actually kind of interesting, and it clears up why “photos” doesn’t get the same treatment. Let me explain.
The rule in one line
When a word ends in a consonant plus the letter o, English usually makes it plural by adding es, not just s.
Tomato ends in a t sound plus o. So it follows the crowd:
- tomato becomes tomatoes
- potato becomes potatoes
- hero becomes heroes
- echo becomes echoes
Notice a pattern? These are all everyday, old English words that end in that consonant-o combo. They take the es. Tomato is right there with them.
So “tomatoes” isn’t some weird exception. It’s the normal rule doing exactly what it does.
Then why is it “photos” and not “photoes”?
Good question, because this is where people get thrown off.
Some words that end in o only take an s. Photo becomes photos. Piano becomes pianos. Taco becomes tacos. Memo becomes memos.
Here’s the trick. Those words are either shortened versions of longer words, like photo from photograph, or they came into English from other languages fairly recently, like piano and taco. Words like that skip the es and just take an s.
Tomato is not a shortcut and it’s not brand new to English, so it doesn’t get the photo treatment. It sticks with the es.
A few words honestly can’t make up their mind and let you do both, like volcanoes or volcanos, and mangoes or mangos. Tomato isn’t one of those. It’s always tomatoes.
The apostrophe nobody asked for
Now for the mistake I see even more than “tomatos.”
It’s the sign at the market that reads “Tomato’s, £1.” That apostrophe should not be there.
An apostrophe does not make a word plural. “Tomato’s” means either something belongs to a tomato, like “the tomato’s skin,” or it’s short for “tomato is,” like “this tomato’s ripe.” That’s it. Two jobs, neither of them plural.
If you mean more than one tomato, you never need an apostrophe. It’s just tomatoes. This mix-up is so common with grocers that it earned its own nickname, the greengrocer’s apostrophe. Now you’re in on the joke.
While we’re at it, it’s not “tomatoe” either
The singular has no e on the end. One tomato, no e. The e only shows up when you add the es to make it plural.
If that sounds like a small thing, tell that to a former US Vice President. Back in 1992, Dan Quayle stood at a school spelling bee and “corrected” a kid who had spelled potato perfectly, telling him to add an e and make it “potatoe.” The kid was right. Quayle was wrong. It followed him for years.
The lesson sticks: one potato, one tomato, no e until you go plural. Even people at the top of government have flubbed this one.
An easy way to remember it
If the grammar rule won’t stick, use this.
Picture the two most famous foods that follow the pattern: potatoes and tomatoes. They rhyme, they hang out together on dinner plates, and they both take the es. Lock those two together in your head and you’ll never write “tomatos” again.
Fun side note, the word itself is a traveler. The word traces back to the Aztecs, who called it something close to “tomatl,” long before English speakers argued about how to pluralize it.
The bottom line
More than one tomato is always tomatoes, spelled with an e before the s. “Tomatos” is not a word, and “tomato’s” with an apostrophe means possession, not plural. The singular is just tomato, no e.
Get those three straight and you’ve beaten a mistake that trips up chalkboard signs everywhere.
By the way, spelling it is one battle. Saying it is a whole other argument, which is why how you say the word out loud has its own story. And if you’re now wondering whether the thing is even a fruit, well, the fruit-or-vegetable debate is a fun rabbit hole too. I keep more tomato questions people ask over in the Common Questions section.