Plurals of Compound Nouns
The majority of English compound nouns have one basic term, or head, with which they end. These are nouns and are pluralized in typical fashion:
| able seaman | able seamen |
| head banger | head bangers |
| yellow-dog contract | yellow-dog contracts |
Some compounds have one head with which they begin. These heads are also nouns and the head usually pluralizes, leaving the second, adjectival, term unchanged:
| attorney general | attorneys general |
| bill of attainder | bills of attainder |
| court martial | courts martial |
| director general | directors general |
| fee simple absolute | fees simple absolute |
| governor-general | governors-general |
| passerby | passersby |
| ship of the line | ships of the line |
| son-in-law | sons-in-law |
| minister-president | ministers-president |
| procurator fiscal (in Scotland) | procurators fiscal |
It is common in informal speech to instead pluralize the last word in the manner typical of most English nouns, but in edited prose, the forms given above are preferred.
If a compound can be thought to have two heads, both of them tend to be pluralized when the first head has an irregular plural form:
| man-child | men-children |
| manservant | menservants |
| woman doctor | women doctors |
Two-headed compounds in which the first head has a standard plural form, however, tend to pluralize only the final head:
| city-state | city-states |
| nurse-practitioner | nurse-practitioners |
| scholar-poet | scholar-poets |
In military usage, the term general, as part of an officer's title, is etymologically an adjective, but it has been adopted as a noun and thus a head, so compound titles employing it are pluralized at the end:
| brigadier general | brigadier generals |
| major general | major generals |
For compounds of three or more words that have a head (or a term functioning as a head) with an irregular plural form, only that term is pluralized:
| man-about-town | men-about-town |
| man-of-war | men-of-war |
| woman of the street | women of the street |
For many other compounds of three or more words with a head at the front —especially in cases where the compound is ad hoc and/or the head is metaphorical— it is generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last (if open when singular, such compounds tend to take hyphens when plural in the latter case):
| ham on rye | hams on rye/ham-on-ryes |
| jack-in-the-box | jacks-in-the-box/jack-in-the-boxes |
| jack-in-the-pulpit | jacks-in-the-pulpit/jack-in-the-pulpits |
With a few extended compounds, both terms may be pluralized—again, with an alternative (which may be more prevalent, e.g., heads of state):
| head of state | heads of states/heads of state |
| son of a bitch | sons of bitches/sons-of-a-bitch |
With extended compounds constructed around o', only the last term is pluralized (or left unchanged if it is already plural):
| cat-o'-nine-tails | cat-o'-nine-tails |
| jack-o'-lantern | jack-o'-lanterns |
| will-o'-the-wisp | will-o'-the-wisps |
See also the Headless nouns section below.
Read more about this topic: English Plural
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