-'s

Etymology 1
From, , from , from ,. Cognate with 🇨🇬,, 🇨🇬, , 🇨🇬, , 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬.

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. is used (the dog 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: or St. James’, Chris's or Chris&apos;, Jesus's or Jesus&apos;. The American Heritage Dictionary (under the entry "possessive") prescribes restricting this to words or names of at least two syllables, such as witness&apos;; 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  (identically to (a) Dickens novel), Dickens’s novel.
 * 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 possessions of multiple people who don't share the same name, 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 instead, using only one ’s: Jack and Jill’s pails.
 * The use of ’s to make nouns or noun phrases genitive that are seemingly already marked thus by is widespread in English. It is nearly exclusively used with animate nouns. It may seem redundant, but it can clarify meaning. For example, “painting of the woman” can mean “painting that belongs to the woman” or “painting that depicts the woman”, but “painting of the woman’s” must mean “painting that belongs to the woman”. Though widespread, some speakers find it awkward and suggest it be avoided by rewriting sentences that would require it.
 * 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”.

Translations

 * Afrikaans:
 * Arabic: genitive construction is used - the thing owned is followed by the owner in the genitive case - (إضافَة iḍāfa)
 * Armenian: -ի, -յի
 * Bengali:, -র
 * Bulgarian:
 * Burmese:
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese:, 的 ,
 * Mandarin: ,
 * Czech: ,
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto:
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * German:,  ,
 * Silesian: -s, -sch
 * Greek:, ,
 * Hindi:, , ,
 * Hungarian:, -a/-e/-ja/-je
 * Italian:
 * Japanese:, , ,
 * Khmer:
 * Korean:
 * Lao:
 * Latin:
 * Malay:
 * Neapolitan: 'e
 * Norwegian:, (after the thing owned and before the owner, his genitive)
 * Persian: ezafe is used, a Persian grammatical construct
 * Portuguese:
 * Russian:, , , , ;
 * Southern Amami Ōshima: な
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:
 * Thai:
 * Turkish: -'nin, -'nun, -'nın
 * Urdu: کا, کے, کی, کی
 * Vietnamese:
 * West Frisian:, -'s


 * Danish: hos
 * Dutch:
 * French:
 * Hebrew:
 * Hungarian:, -s/​-os/​-as/​-es/​-ös
 * Italian:
 * Russian: Expressed by dative case

Etymology 2
Equivalent to, with addition of apostrophe.

Suffix

 * 1)  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.
 * 2)  Used to form plurals of foreign words, to clarify pronunciation, such as “banana’s” or “pasta’s”.
 * 3)  Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.
 * 1)  Used to form plurals of foreign words, to clarify pronunciation, such as “banana’s” or “pasta’s”.
 * 2)  Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.
 * 1)  Used to form plurals of foreign words, to clarify pronunciation, such as “banana’s” or “pasta’s”.
 * 2)  Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.
 * 1)  Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.
 * 1)  Used to form the plural of nouns that correctly take just an "s" in the plural. See greengrocer’s apostrophe.

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”) &mdash; the so-called “greengrocer’s apostrophe” &mdash; is proscribed.

Suffix

 * 1) Used to form the plural form of nouns ending in a vowel, except schwa.
 * foto → foto’s (instead of fotoos)
 * taxi → taxi’s (instead of taxies)
 * 1) Used to form the genitive form of proper nouns which end in certain vowels; the apostrophe actually stands for an elided vowel.
 * Anna → Anna’s (instead of Annaas)

Suffix

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

Article
(clitic)



Pronoun
(clitic)


 * mir's, ich's, ... = mir es, ich es, ...
 * geht's, nimm's, ... = geht es, nimm es, ...
 * wenn's, ob's, ... = wenn es, ob es, ...
 * wenn's, ob's, ... = wenn es, ob es, ...