I didn’t want all this work to go unnoticed. Thanks for all the research! I really appreciate it.
So far, I’ve owned two Minis Cooper in my life.
Thanks back atcha!
English is an extremely flexible language, so most such questionable grammar issues can be avoided by re-wording the sentence.
For example, you could have just said:
“At least I wasn’t some Johnny-come-lately!”
Rewording is doable when editing some text, but in verbal use it is really hard to flip around a sentence on the fly. By the time you see the problem you’re already into the sentence too deep.
I really don’t think rewording is the answer in “most” situations. Ordinary people talk a lot more than they write.
I think “Johnnies come lately” would have been funnier, and since you were speaking – and could use inflection to emphasize the hypercorrection – that was the way to go. Ah well, another one of those esprit de l’escaliers, I guess*. *
(I do hear “attorney generals/attorneys general” spoken a fair amount on legal and political podcasts, and if someone uses “attorneys general” it’s almost always with some verbal indication that they’re trying to be funny – or know they sound ridiculous.)
Another thank-you to Exapno Mapcase for going the distance.
Unlike snoe, I don’t hear verbal hints of joking when newspeople use “attorneys general.” Maybe I listen to different news sources.
I agree; ditto for “men-about-town” as opposed to “man-about-towns”, for instance.
Came in here to make this point. Using the “Xs Y” format is always funnier, and actually seems to be a somewhat trendy gag these days.
Not in newscasts, but podcasts, which tend to be more casual and jokey.
While I agree that in English the ‘correct’ usage is basically emergent and doesn’t have to fit some rule, we might consider looking at a reason for ‘Johnnie come latelies’ vs ‘Mothers in Law’ or ‘Attorneys General’.
The way I would distinguish them is that in the context of the phrase, both ‘Attorney’ and Mother’ are nouns that can stand alone, and the rest of the phrase is just a modifier. There is a group of Mothers. What kind? Mothers in law.
But ‘Johnnie’ in this case has no context outside the phrase. There isn’t literally a group of people named ‘Johnnie’ that happened to also be late. We never say, ‘Hey, there’s a bunch of Johnnies over there!’ Therefore, ‘Johnnie on the spot’ or ‘Johnnie come lately’ would have acceptable plurals that treat the whole phrase as one thing and add the ‘S’ on the end. If I pluralize by saying ‘Johnnies come lately’, it sure sounds like a group of ‘Johnnies’ is a thing, but it’s not because we never use that term without one of the modifiers.
If we were in the habit of calling say a group of men ‘a bunch of Johnnies’, or ‘Johnnie’ was a descriptor for a type of person, “He’s a real Johnny, isn’t he?” Then it would be different. Maybe it was in the past, leading to two acceptable ways of pluralizing.
Johnny or Johnnie has been used as a generic term for a guy:
Johnny Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster (Fellow, guy)
Johnnie - definition of Johnnie by The Free Dictionary (a man or boy, chap)
That’s why you have Johnny-come-lately and Johnny-on-the-spot (and Johnny Reb). So, if you have a group of generic guys, they certainly could be called a bunch of Johnnies. So, I don’t see how that is distinguished from mothers-in-law.
This is essentially what Gardner’s Modern English Usage meant by a “disguised” noun.
Yeah. But those are archaic uses. I do 't think I’ve ever heard a group of men called ‘johnnies’ in a modern context. I mentioned archaic uses as a reason why we consider both versions of the plural correct.
We do here in Minnesota, near the location of St. John’s University and playing against their sports teams. It’s pretty common to refer to then as ‘Johnnies’. (And ‘Bennies’ for the girls in St. Benedicts College next door.)
Well okay, but that’s obviously a special case. But in that case, feel free to use whatever plural form floats your boat.