# Why "apostrophe-s" for possessive? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 30, 2005, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829 "2005-07-30T00:16:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cruel\_butterfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5daacb/32.png) [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/1 "2005-07-30T00:16:07Z")
If an apostrophe signals that there are letters omitted in order to shorten groups of words into contractions (as in “you’re correct”), what letters, if any, are omitted in order to express possession (as in “Jessica’s game”) If there are no omitted letters, then what is the linguistic history of this form? ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/2 "2005-07-30T01:56:45Z")
The use of the letter S to indicate possession dates from Old English, when the language was still highly inflected like German. The genetive case, which indicated possession, was chacterized by the -es ending for masculine and neuter singular nouns. This was from the time the “English” first arrived in England to about 1066, the Norman conquest. The use of -'s for possessives was nearly universal by the time of Early Modern English (Shakespeare’s day). Likely, the apostrophe was added to differentiate plurals from possessives. However, there are no omitted letters- it descends directly from the -es ending used in the genetive case in Old English. English was dispensing with inflections even by the late Old English period, with -'s surviving today as one of the few inflectional endings we still use. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/3 "2005-07-30T02:05:03Z")
If, as you say, it descends directly from the -es ending, wouldn’t the e be the missing letter? ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/4 "2005-07-30T02:20:38Z")
> [@1920s Style "Death Ray"](#): > > If, as you say, it descends directly from the -es ending, wouldn’t the e be the missing letter? While the E was indeed deleted, I don’t think the apostrophe represents it. There are plenlty of examples of possessives from English that only have the -s ending. The apostrophe was added after the -s ending had already arisen. Also, it occurs to me that to say the E “disappeared” isn’t quite accurate. The -es ending, as I said, was the genetive case marker for masculine and neuter singular nouns, and those nouns only. Feminine and plural nouns had other endings for the genitive case. The -es ending changed to -s as it generalized to all other nouns and gained an apostrophe, kinda becoming a new inflection based on the old one, rather than the same old one a bit different. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/5 "2005-07-30T02:29:48Z")
Ah, ok. I know very little about it and wondered if you had missed something obvious. You hadn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/6 "2005-07-30T05:31:59Z")
> [@Loopus](#): > > The -es ending changed to -s as it generalized to all other nouns and gained an apostrophe, kinda becoming a new inflection based on the old one, rather than the same old one a bit different. Was this the result of a sound change that weakened unstressed \? I suspect that the \ probably disappeared because of a phonetic change that made it silent (and not orthographically necessary like the etymological \ at the end of a lot of words.) Just speculating, though. Anyway, there’s no letter being omitted here at all; some linguist or another (can’t remember where I read it right now) has remarked that the apostrophe is really just the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. The apostrophe doesn’t _really_ represent omitted letters in English, anyway - the contractions used in speech are more realistically words in their own right (after all, how else can you explain the spelling of “won’t”?) ---
**Author:** ![cruel\_butterfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5daacb/32.png) [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/7 "2005-07-30T17:01:37Z")
Thanks for the information. I can always rely on my fellow Dopers to have answers to even the most obscure questions. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/8 "2005-07-30T18:22:48Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > The apostrophe doesn’t _really_ represent omitted letters in English, anyway - the contractions used in speech are more realistically words in their own right (after all, how else can you explain the spelling of “won’t”?) Admittedly there is no verb “wo”. And I don’t know whether “willn’t” or “win’t” ever had any popularity. But surely that’s just one little oddity, an exception that doesn’t disprove the rule? ---
**Author:** ![Uvula\_Donor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e19adc/32.png) [@Uvula\_Donor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uvula_Donor)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/9 "2005-07-30T18:49:08Z")
You will find in many Middle English texts the word “his” denoting posession, as in Malory’s _Morte Darthur_: > [@](#): > > And never dud I batayle all only for God his sake. . . Thus the apostrophe in some cases does represent a contraction of the earlier form. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/10 "2005-07-30T19:06:36Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Was this the result of a sound change that weakened unstressed \? I suspect that the \ probably disappeared because of a phonetic change that made it silent (and not orthographically necessary like the etymological \ at the end of a lot of words.) I don’t know, and can’t find anything about it, but it sounds plausible. Unstressed vowels in English, after the Old English period, were nearly all reduced to the “uh” (shwa) sound, making them supremely unimportant, though not silent. > [@Uvula Donor](#): > > Thus the apostrophe in some cases does represent a contraction of the earlier form. My source (_A Biography of the English Language_ by CM Millward) informs me that that form is a result of people mistaking a mistake. > [@](#): > > In one respect, the use of the possessive differed startlingly in EMnE [Early Modern English] from its use in PDE [Present-Day English]. Apparently people interpreted the final [s] (or [z] or [Iz]) of the possessive nouns as a contraction of the possessive adjective _his_ rather than what it historically is, an inflectional ending. Then, in writing, they would spell out in full possessive adjective. This misinterpretation appears earliest and most frequently with _his_, but spread to the other possessive adjectives by analogy. That the apostrophe does not represent a possessive is obvious in that, while you see “the king’s castle” (which could be the king his castle), you never see “the queen’r castle” (the queen her castle) or “the monarch’eir castle” (the monarchs their castel). The possessive form “the king his castle” also did not appear until the -s/-'s ending had become widespread, highly suggesting that its use was a misinterpretation, _i.e._ a later, not earlier, form. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/11 "2005-07-30T19:08:52Z")
> [@Loopus](#): > > That the apostrophe does not represent a possessive is obvious in that… Of course, that should read “the apostrophe does not represent a possessive _adjective_.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Uvula\_Donor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e19adc/32.png) [@Uvula\_Donor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uvula_Donor)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/12 "2005-07-30T20:03:19Z")
Seems I was mistaken; think I’ll look up Millward’s book. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-apostrophe-s-for-possessive/314829/13 "2005-07-31T05:14:00Z")
Umm, German came in with the [Angles and the Saxons](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/inv_sax_jutes.shtml) in the late 4th century. What came in after [the Battle of Hastings](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/ang_hastings.shtml) (1066) was French (and thus, indirectly, Latin).