The plural of beloved is beloveds, therefore you would say: My beloveds. By that note, my beloved can only be understood as one beloved , one person. Unless that listener's English is poor, that is. For a further example, there's a book called Lovers and Beloveds. Also, what about Dante's Two Beloveds? Re-examining key passages in Dante’s oeuvre in the light of the crucial issue of moral choice, this book provides a new thematic framework for interpreting the Divine Comedy. Olivia Holmes ... I'm curious about the phrase “dearly beloved ”. – It looks to me to be a phrase consisting of an adverb (dearly) modifying a noun ( beloved ). But I thought adverbs could only modify verbs or adjectiv... When I first read Romeo and Juliet in high school, I remember being intrigued by pairs of words such as, beloved /belovèd and learned/learnèd where there's an accent grave on the 'e' of the last The formulaic expression dearly departed seems to have emerged in the mid 19th century, and dear departed in the early 18th century (per a lazy ngram search). I suspect some obituary column editor felt an adverb was needed to modify departed and that (bogus) edit "stuck". Possibly influenced by dearly beloved .
