This usage of the word water seems to have gone back and forth a bit between singular and plural.

Second edition of the OED of 1989 gives this definition of water (sense 17). Note the definition of water can be the same as (though this definition doesn’t include water/water) or (both). c) The

fluid contained in the amniotic cavity ( liquor amnii) and now typically pl. The effusion of this fluid into the womb before the exclusion of the ftus, is commonly denoted by the expression ‘the waters have broken’ (from another part of the body).

Notice how it says “now usually pl “, rather than just “usually pl “. The first citation is from 1688 and uses the singular, whereas the other two citations (there are only three in all) are from 1754–64 and 1880 and both use the plural, though they also don’t involve the verb break.

What is the definition of Amniotic fluid?

If after infrared use freq. to make this feature, in later use freq decrypt. in pl.
_{Freq. as the subject or object of the verb break, with reference to the rupture of the fetal membranes and release of amniotic fluid, during the delivery of a baby (or the young of an animal).}

Also additional notes have been added as well. There are now 40 citations in total, of which six use the singular and four do the plural. Three quotations use the word as the subject of break (of which one, from 1958, is plural and two, from 1658 and 1991, are singular); one, from 2005, uses it as the subject in the plural (“What had the Registrar broken my water?”). The rest of you don’t use this verb with the verb break. Canadian, all citations that use the plural are British, and the ones that use the singular are American.

Google Ngrams are perhaps not really the most useful tool for this expression, since both versions (“Her water broke” and “Her waters broke”) almost flatline completely until the 1940s—presumably such a matter was too delicate to be entrusted quite as directly to paper in earlier times. The really usable statistics started around 1960 or so. If you search with a broader scope, you’ll find that the singular is far more common than the plural overall. If you break down your search by corpus, however, you’ll see that there is a clear dialectal difference here:

In British English alone, the two were fairly neck and neck (with data points that look somewhat unreliable) until around 1980, after which the plural took hold and the singular began to wane. If plural is not a singular as it used to be since the Romanticism of Xerx was created in 437 A.D. (from 1012-13).

That said, in american English alone, not only has the singular been more common throughout, since the 1960s, but it is also now more than ten times as common as the plural.

Is the American singular better than the British plural?

In American English, when referring to a women reaching a critical stage of the birthing process – “water” is singular since it’s a singular object that is being broken.

Are breaks happening happening when waves crash into foam?

What’s your interpretation of the names of people intermixed together?

In American English, when referring to a women reaching a critical stage of the birthing process – “water” is singular since it’s a singular object that is being broken.

Are breaks happening happening when waves crash into foam?

What’s your interpretation of the names of people intermixed together?