Weekend Wordery: In Which I Humbly Admit I Was Wrong, Sort Of
I am loath to report that, contrary to all sense and logic in the universe, I was sort of wrong about attorneys general’s. It turns out I am not a very cunning linguist. But on the bright side, I am not half as stupid as the English-language convention according to which attorneys general’s is proper usage.
I say “sort of wrong” because, even though attorneys general’s does not violate grammatical rules in any formal sense, my style manual—Chicago, 14th ed.—specifically advises that such phrases be avoided and replaced by a prepositional phrase with of. Here’s the whole entry for possessives of compound nouns, § 6.22:
It is customary to form the possessive of all compound nouns, whether closed, open, or hyphenated, and of similar noun phrases by adding the inflection at the end of the compound or phrase:
cookbook’s
doctor of philosophy’s
daughter-in-law’s
the mayor of Chicago’sThe possessive of the plurals of compound nouns may be formed in the same way, but many of the resulting forms are awkward and might profitably be replaced by the possessive prepositional phrase with of:
cookbooks’
daughters-in-law’s or of the daughters-in-lawTo form the possessive of the plural of noun phrases, like the one illustrated above, it is best to use the construction with of and avoid the possessive inflection:
of the mayors of Chicago
the wives of the doctors in the amphitheater
When the “head noun” is at the left of the phrase, as in brother-in-law, the phrase is pluralized by adding -s to the head noun. But the possessive inflection ‘s goes at the end of the phrase—no matter what kind of word the phrase ends with—as in, alas, brothers-in-law’s. Also: You can borrow whoever finishes first’s pencil. Or They will ride in whomever your sisters-in-law’s friends are going with’s cars! And, yes:
The Attorneys General’s arguments are bogus.
Les Mots Justes
Austin Frakt‘s mom, through back-channel comments, lays her finger on the only really practical way to treat the plural possessive of attorney general: avoid it at all cost.
My wife Nina agrees and further buttresses the strategic avoidance paradigm by pointing out that the phrase bogus arguments of the attorneys general follows the way the plural possessive is formed in French. That’s fitting, since it was the French-speaking Normans’ conquest of Britain in 1066 that got us into this fix in the first place. If we’re gonna follow the French rule for forming the plural, attorneys general, we might as well follow their rule for forming the plural possessive: of the attorneys general.
I also like the suggestion of switching into acronym mode, à la the AGs’ bogus arguments—as baseball fans do with RBIs for runs batted in—though I’m sure purists will have none of it. For them, just as you can end a season with one RBI or 190 RBI, you can file a bogus lawsuit with one AG or 50 AG. Because sticklers are like that.
Stay tuned for the denouement of this gripping series about plural possessives, in which we’ll visit the “in-laws” and learn whether I’m totally wrong about attorneys general’s.
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