greengrocer's apostrophe
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.22 in modern English
33
Scrabble Score
22
Letters
6
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An incorrectly used apostrophe; (especially) one mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun, for example: writing the plural of banana as banana's (a possessive) instead of bananas.
Example Sentences
- "[A] flashing neon sign advertising the Pari's Hotel is less an early case of greengrocer's apostrophe than a sardonic Pascalian allusion (pari in French meaning 'bet')."
- "It is hardly surprising that these conventions seem to be in rapid collapse, with what has been called "the greengrocer's apostrophe" (apple's 60p, Antique's, linguistic's, and perhaps even mean't, all personally attested) […]"
- "The vast majority of letters concerned misplaced apostrophes, of course, in potato’s and lemon’s. But it was interesting, once I started to analyse and sort the examples, to discover that the greengrocer’s apostrophe formed just one depressing category of the overall, total, mind-bogglingly depressing misuse of the apostrophe."
- "When applied in English it produces greengrocer's apostrophes."
- "The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”)."