Interesting - I wondered how you'd differentiate between "ticks" and "pliers" in plural and figured it'd follow the same pattern as Czech (so something like "kliešťata") but when I looked it up on Google translate it's just the same as "pliers". Is that right?

And weirdly the Czech for "pliers" isn't the same as "ticks":

    Slovak    Czech
    kliešte   kleště
    kliešť    klíště
    kliešte   klíšťata

Though having pulled a handful of klíšťata from my dog already this summer, I'd have to concede to that "pliers" is actually a very appropriate homonym.

It’s funny to compare Slovak with Polish — you could also use “kleszcze” for pliers (and “kleszcz” is also tick), but it sounds archaic — today you’d say “szczypce” or “kombinerki”, which are also nouns without singular form. Also, “pants” are called “spodnie”, which also lacks singular form, but “nogawa/nogawka” still means a pant leg.

That's so interesting. In Bulgarian we're starting to interchangeably use singular/plural versions of some of these words. E.g. "scissors" is "nozhici" (ножици), but very often used in its singular "nozhica"; similar with pants - nominally "pantaloni" (borrowed from French, of course), but very often encountered as a "pantalon". However, "pliers" and "glasses" cannot be comfortably made to assume a singular form, so they're always plural.

> kombinierki

In Slovak, there is "kombinačky", which is shortening from "kombinované kliešte". Basically more or less the same item as as "combination pliers".

"Kleszcze" may sound archaic, but it's technically a correct term (to denote a very specific type of tool). So DIY nerds wouldn't agree with you.

> Grammatically plural nouns denoting single objects is something that occurs in multiple European languages (and perhaps others), not only English.

None of those examples in English unambiguously denote single objects, they all denote indefinite numbered collections. The explicit singular object in each case is "a pair of X", where "X" is the term you have listed, and that is a grammatically singular noun phrase denoting a singular object.

These are all Indo-European languages. But interestingly, this has been transported even to Finnic languages, which are grammatically entirely different and unrelated, but still have plural forms for the same words:

pants -> Finnish "housut", scissors -> "sakset"; there is no singular "housu" or "saksi" in that meaning. As above, there is the singular "saksi" but it means a Saxon.

Hmm. For the French part, "ciseaux" is true (the singular "ciseau" is what is called a chisel in English) but the rest is wrong.

A pair of pants is un pantalon, and a pair of pliers is also just une pince.

"Lunettes" (glasses) would be another word that is usually plural. Juste one lunette is a scope for just one eye (or some circular object with a hole in the middle).

In Polish it's the same story with "drzwi" (or "doors" - same thing as in English) as well as... "skrzypce" ("violin"). For some unfathomable reason it, too, is made to sound like a plural noun.