-'s

See also: 's and Appendix:Variations of "s"

English

For the contracted (clitic) uses of ’s, see 's.

Alternative forms

• -’s
• -s (now nonstandard)
• -s- (genitival interfix)

Pronunciation

• (after voiceless consonants except /s/, /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/) enPR: s, IPA^(key): /s/
• (after a sibilant or affricate)
  • (UK) enPR: ĭz, IPA^(key): /ɪz/
  • (US) enPR: ĭz, əz, IPA^(key): /ɪz/, /əz/
  • (General Australian) enPR: əz, IPA^(key): /əz/
• (elsewhere) enPR: z, IPA^(key): /z/
• Homophone: -s

Etymology 1

From Middle English -s, -es, from Old English -es (“-'s”, masculine and neuter genitive singular ending), from Proto-Germanic *-as, *-is (masculine and neuter genitive singular ending). Cognate with Dutch -s, -es (“-'s”), German -s, -es (“-'s”), Danish -s, -es (“-'s”), Swedish -s (“-'s”), Norwegian -s (“-'s”), Icelandic -s (“-'s”).

Suffix

-'s (enclitic)

2. Possessive marker, indicating that an object belongs to the noun or noun phrase bearing the marker.

   Jane's house is bigger than Sarah's.

   The cat bit the dog’s tail. (the dog + ’s)

   The cat bit the dog with the shaggy fur’s tail. (the dog with the shaggy fur + ’s)

   women’s contributions to science

   • 2012 April 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 1-5 Chelsea”, in BBC‎^[1]:

     Before kick-off, a section of Chelsea’s support sadly let themselves and their club down by noisily interrupting the silence held in memory of the Hillsborough disaster and for Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini, who collapsed and died after suffering a heart attack during a Serie B game on Saturday.

3. In the absence of a specified object, used to indicate “the house/place/establishment of”.

   We’re going to Luigi’s for dinner tonight. — that is, “Luigi’s house” or “Luigi’s restaurant”

   I'm going to the butcher’s for a steak.

   I bought it at Tesco’s. (see s-form)

   greengrocer’s

4. Indicates a purpose or a user.

   You need a driver’s licence.

   These are popular boy’s T-shirts.

   Alex can be a girl’s name.

   That's a girl’s toy. (A toy intended for use by girls.) — Homographic to: That's a girl’s toy. (The toy of a specific girl.)

   people’s

5. Used to indicate a quantity of something, especially of time.

   I took three weeks' holiday.

   The rocks lay at about a mile's distance from the shore.

6. Used to indicate various other kinds of relationship, such as source or origin, object of an action, subject depicted, etc.

   the doctor's help (help provided by the doctor)

   the King's capture (event of the King being captured)

   my father's portrait (portrait depicting my father)

   in Dublin's fair city (in the fair city of Dublin)

7. (see usage notes) Attached to a noun or noun phrase linked to a genitive of, forming a double genitive.

   a friend of Sarah's

   • c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 340, column 1:

     NAy, but this dotage of our Generals
     Ore-flowes the meaſure: […]

Usage notes

• Irregular plurals with endings other than ‘s’ (e.g. children) always take ’s: the children’s voices.
• Words ending in s are made possessive in various ways. Consider:
  • With regular plurals, the apostrophe is placed at the end, i.e. -s' is used (the dogs’ tails, whereas for singular ‘dog’, the dog’s tail).
  • The possessives of names which end in s may be formed using either this suffix (-'s) or bare -' (which see for more). Hence: St. James’s or St. James’, Chris's or Chris', Jesus's or Jesus'. The American Heritage Dictionary (under the entry "possessive") prescribes restricting this to words or names of at least two syllables, such as witness'; in practice, it is found on names of any length, even one syllable. The suffixes used will alter the word's pronunciation; for example: Dickens’ novel /dɪkɪnz nɒvəl/ (identically to (a) Dickens novel), Dickens’s novel /dɪkɪnzɪz nɒvəl/.
• To remedy ambiguity or awkwardness in either speech or print, possessives can generally be recast using of: the tails of the dogs, the paths of St. James.
• When referring to joint possession by multiple people, the standard, formal way to form the possessive is Jack’s and Jill’s pails. However, it is common to treat the pair of names as a noun phrase and to form the possessive of this whole unit instead, using only one ’s: Jack and Jill’s pails. When the possession is not joint (i.e., each possessor has their own possession), the possessiveness is signaled for each possessor; for example, Jack’s and Jill’s pails were leaky and watertight, respectively.
  • In joint possession, when one of the possessors is represented by a possessive pronoun rather than their name, the possessiveness is standardly signaled for each; for example, Jack’s and her pails were leaky. When the first person or second person is used, although forms such as "John and I’s car" for "John’s and my car" are descriptively not rare, they are nonstandard and are grating to some ears; they are thus prescriptively often avoided.
• The use of ’s to make nouns or noun phrases genitive that are seemingly already marked thus by of is widespread in English. It is nearly exclusively used with animate nouns. Its redundancy may often seem unnecessary but sometimes can clarify meaning and in some cases even has no idiomatic alternative; more at Wikipedia at double genitive.
• Nouns that look and sound identical in the singular and plural still do when this suffix is attached, so “one moose” becomes “one moose’s” and “two moose” becomes “two moose’s”.

Synonyms

• of

Descendants

• → Korean: 스 (-seu)

Translations

possessive marker

• Afrikaans: se (af)
• Arabic: genitive construction is used - the thing owned is followed by the owner in the genitive case - (إضافَة iḍāfa)
• Armenian: -ի (-i), -յի (-yi)
• Bengali: -এর (bn) (-er) (if the thing ends with a consonant), -র (-ro) (if the thing ends with a vowel)
• Bulgarian: на (bg) (na) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Burmese: ၏ (my) (e)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 嘅 (yue) (ge³) (vernacular), 的 (dik¹) (formal), 之 (yue) (zi¹) (classical)

  Mandarin: 的 (zh) (de), 之 (zh) (zhī) (classical)

• Czech: -ův (cs), -in (cs)
• Dutch: -s (nl) (formal)
• Esperanto: de (eo) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Finnish: -n (fi) (genitive suffix)
• French: de (fr) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• German: -s (de), des (de) m or n der (de) f (genitive, after the thing owned and before the owner, or before the owner and the thing owned), von (de) (after the thing owned and before the owner with dative)

  Silesian: -s, -sch (by words ending with r)

• Greek: του (el) m or n (tou), της (el) f (tis), των (el) pl (ton) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Hindi: का (hi) m (kā), के (hi) m pl (ke), की (hi) f (kī), की (hi) f pl (kī)
• Hungarian: -é (hu) (predicatively), -a/-e/-ja/-je (suffix on the thing owned)
• Italian: di (it) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Japanese: の (ja) (no), が (ja) (ga)(literary or Kagoshima), つ (ja) (tsu)(archaic or obsolete), ん (ja) (n)(informal)
• Khmer: នៃ (km) (nɨy) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Korean: 의 (ko) (ui)
• Lao: ຂອງ (lo) (khǭng) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Latin: (genitive case of the owner)
• Malay: milik (ms) (optional, after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Neapolitan: 'e
• Norwegian: -s (no), til (no) (after the thing owned and before the owner, his genitive)
• Ojibwe: (leave possessor unchanged and use relevant possessed form of the possessed noun)
• Persian: ezafe (اضافه (ezâfe)) is used, a Persian grammatical construct
• Portuguese: de (pt) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Russian: -ов (ru) m (-ov), -ев (ru) m (-ev), -ёв (ru) m (-jóv), -ин (ru) m (-in), -ын (ru) m (-yn); (genitive case of the owner after the thing owned)
• Southern Amami Ōshima: な (na)
• Spanish: de (es) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Swedish: -s (sv)
• Thai: ของ (th) (kɔ̌ɔng) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• Turkish: -'nin, -'nun, -'nın
• Urdu: کا m (kā), کے m pl (ke), کی f (kī), کی f pl (kī)
• Vietnamese: của (vi) (after the thing owned and before the owner)
• West Frisian: fan (fy) (after the thing owned and before the owner), -'s (dated)

the house/place/establishment of

• Danish: hos
• Dutch: bij (nl)
• French: chez (fr)
• Hebrew: אצל (he)
• Hungarian: -ék (hu) (someone’s family/​house/​place), -s/​-os/​-as/​-es/​-ös (menders, sellers, and craftspeople like órás, újságos, fazekas, zöldséges, pedikűrös)
• Italian: da (it)
• Russian: Expressed by dative case

Etymology 2

Equivalent to -s, with addition of apostrophe.

Suffix

-'s

1. (sometimes proscribed) Used to form the plurals of numerals, letters, some abbreviations and some nouns, usually because the omission of an apostrophe would make the meaning unclear or ambiguous.

   There are four 3’s in my phone number.

   “Banana” has three a’s and one b. (apostrophe "s" used so that the plural of “a” is not confused with the word “as”)

   You can buy CD’s in that shop.

   These are the do’s and don’ts. (apostrophe "s" used as “dos” may be misread)

   10’s; 100’s; A+’s; A.U.’s; don’t’s; s’s

2. (obsolete) Used to form plurals of foreign words, to clarify pronunciation, such as “banana’s” or “pasta’s”.

   index’s

3. (proscribed) Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.

   Apple’s 50p a pound

Usage notes

The use of ’s to form plurals of initialisms or numerals is not currently recommended by most authorities, except when the meaning would otherwise be unclear. The use in foreign words was common before the 19th century, but is no longer accepted. The use of the apostrophe in any other plural (as in “apple’s”) — the so-called “greengrocer’s apostrophe” — is proscribed.

Coordinate terms

• -'d

Translations

-s — see -s

See also

• its, it’s
• let’s
• greengrocer’s apostrophe

Afrikaans

Suffix

-'s (clitic)

1. Contraction of is.

   Julle's almal die selfde. ― You're all the same.

   Hier's wat ek jou kan vertel. ― Here's what I can tell you.

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio:

  (file)

Suffix

-'s pl

1. Alternative form of -s, used when a word ends in a long vowel that would turn short if suffixed without the apostrophe
   1. forming plurals

      ‎foto + ‎-'s → ‎foto's

   2. forming the genitive

      ‎Anna + ‎-'s → ‎Anna's

German

Etymology 1

Alternative forms

• -s, -'

Suffix

-’s

1. (archaic) Used to form the genitive of proper names
2. Used to form the genitive of proper names under certain circumstances.

   Andrea → Andrea’s (to avoid confusion with Andreas → Andreas’)

Usage notes

• The use of -'s instead of -s is allowed, according to the German spelling reform of 1996, only when bare -s would be ambiguous (as in the example above). In informal writing it is sometimes used even when there is no ambiguity (e.g. Peter's), but this is proscribed.

Etymology 2

Alternative forms

• -s

Article

-’s (clitic)

1. (chiefly colloquial or poetic) contracted form of das

Pronoun

-’s (clitic)

1. (chiefly colloquial or poetic) contracted form of das

See also

• 's

Etymology 3

Alternative forms

• -s (sometimes)

Pronoun

-’s (clitic)

1. (chiefly colloquial or poetic) contracted form of es

   (with other pronouns) mir's, ich's, ... = mir es, ich es, ...

   (with verbs) geht's, nimm's, ... = geht es, nimm es, ...

   (with particles) wenn's, ob's, ... = wenn es, ob es, ...

Etymology 4

Alternative forms

• -s (sometimes)

Verb

-’s (clitic)

1. (colloquial) contracted form of ist

   Er's no' nich' gekomm'n = Er ist noch nicht gekommen spelled according to colloquial pronunciation

See also

• is'

Old Norse

Suffix

-'s (clitic)

1. (bragarmál) Contraction of es.

   Hvat’s með ǫlfum, hvat’s með ǫ́sum ― What is with the elves? What is with the gods?