It is exceedingly common for what started out presumably as mass nouns to
take on a countable meaning just by straightforward metonymic association.


They went to Baden Baden to take the waters.

The children played on the sands.

'Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat . . .'
(W. B. Yeats, 'Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland', line 8)

He pointed to the picture.  "This is my real beauty."

                                'close pent-up guilts
Rive your concealing continents'
(Shakespeare, 'King Lear', III, ii, 58-59)

"How many different fudges do you sell?"

The soft airs of the island refreshed us.

                        'How stand I, then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep?'
(Shakespeare, 'Hamlet', IV, iv, 56-9)


The last is clearly a references to instances (of excitement), as is
'fudges' (varieties of fudge are sold in a shop on King's Parade in
Cambridge, England);  similarly, 'beauty'.  'Airs' suggests breezes in the
air;  'waters' is metonymically restricted to the dosages of spa water given
to visiting invalids;  'sands' stands for the areas of sand on a shore.
'Guilts' stand for the results of a variety of causes of guilt, and so too
for 'angers'.  In all cases the memory of the hearer can readily make the
jump from meaning to meaning by an association of contiguity.

Edmond Wright

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