Doo-dah ... Doo-dah ...
Yes, I do know it's Camptown ladies in the song but I couldn't resist that.
I spotted these two whilst legging it round Lincolns Inn Fields in the City yesterday, and it's actually the sign on the gents that intrigues me.
If you go to school in Camden, is that a plural or is it the plural of a plural?
I spotted these two whilst legging it round Lincolns Inn Fields in the City yesterday, and it's actually the sign on the gents that intrigues me.
If you go to school in Camden, is that a plural or is it the plural of a plural?
posted by Dan Johnson at 1:43 PM
2 Comments:
That would be an incorrectly labeled Genetive - ie possessive noun toilet of the Gentlemen, but with the apostrophe prior to the S missing!
With regards to the Ladies, officially it should be Ladies' also!
Indeed - if you assume that "toilet" is implied. If though the purpose of the signs is not to indicate that the building is a public toilet but that males should go through one door and females through another, we come back to a plural of a plural.
However, given the current vogue for forming any possessive by the simple addition of an apostrophe S (e.g. banana > banana's, box > box's), it would no doubt be only a matter of time before somebody pointed out that Gentlemen's is wrong because Gentlemen is already a plural!
The more you think about it, the more fraught the whole thing gets. No doubt there are those who think the use of the words "ladies" and "gentleman" to be an outmoded middle class affectation and that they should be replaced forthwith by the more robust "men" and "women".
That in turn would of course risk vexing the militant feminists of the borough, who might well then insist upon the use of the word "wimmin" ...
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