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Pedants' corner

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Original poster

Rabbit's tails or rabbits' tails?

17 replies

WreckOfTheHesperus · 15/10/2010 11:14

I know the rule, but DP always gets it wrong, and has to ask me.

Is there a pithy rhyme or something that someone knows which would help him to remember which is which?

OP posts:

takingchances · 15/10/2010 11:18

Well it would be a pretty odd-looking rabbit in the first instance wouldn't it? It might even end up in a special section at the zoo.
I don't know of any helpful rhyme, it's just a case of practise, practise and more practise. (And plenty of reading GOOD QUALITY writing.)

Bumblelion · 15/10/2010 11:18

If there is more than one tail and a rabbit only has one tail, then it means there is more than one rabbit so it will be rabbits' tails.

If there was only one tail, it would be rabbit's tail.

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 11:22

Practice .

And you could suggest that he read the BBC pages on apostrophes and then plays the 'Who owns what?' game on there.

takingchances · 15/10/2010 11:25

Practice? Hoping that's a joke

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 11:30

No. Practice is a noun, practise is a verb. If you had put "practise, practise, then practise more" that would have been OK.

GivesHeadlessHorseman · 15/10/2010 11:31

Surely no such thing as rabbit's tails?

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 11:34

Since, as takingchances says, the first example would refer to a pretty odd looking rabbit, perhaps you should draw a couple of sketches for your DH, Hesperus? One of a mutant multi-tailed rabbit, one with multiple rabbits. That might get the message home!

BeGoneFoulBeast · 15/10/2010 11:37

A mutant bunny could have rabbit's tails. Or a bunny collector of tails could have rabbit's tails.

Possessive cases always seem so simple to me. You put the apostrophe after the thing that is demonstrating ownership. So more than one rabbit, rabbits', single rabbit, rabbit's.

takingchances · 15/10/2010 11:39

Really heartsease? So you can't say "reading, reading and more reading" or similar?? (Honest question, am not challenging you.)

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 11:52

I wasn't having a go at you either tc . Yes, you can say "reading, reading and more reading" -- in that case 'reading', although a verb, is a gerund, so it's acting as a noun in this instance. It's similar to saying "milk, milk and more milk".

In your 'practice' example, you could have used the gerund of 'to practise', which would be the equivalent of your 'reading' example. That would be, 'practising, practising and more practising', but that sounds inelegant because we have another noun which describes the activity of practising, which is 'practice'. That's the decision implicit in your line. That's why I would expect the 'c' spelling of the noun form. If you had put "practise, practise and practise more!" that would have been an imperative form of the verb, so that's why that would be OK.

I could go on, but I fear it would make things seem more complicated than they are! I found quite a good page on gerunds.

BeGoneFoulBeast · 15/10/2010 11:54

I don't think reading works in this instance does it? I mean as a comparison to practise/practice.

Read, read and read more is the comparison I think. You couldn't say read, read and more read.

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 12:00

No, that's what I'm saying. 'Practise' is a more complex example because, since we have the noun 'practice' we don't use the gerund 'practising' nearly as much as we use 'reading'. In the case of 'reading' there's no equivalent noun to 'practice'.

GivesHeadlessHorseman · 15/10/2010 12:00

But wouldn't a rabbit tail collector have rabbits' tails? Though I am starting to see how it could kind of be both, though. Each tail belonged to one rabbit and was a rabbit's tail, so if there were lots of them, they would still be rabbit's tails becuse they never belonged collectively to a group of rabbits???

BeGoneFoulBeast · 15/10/2010 12:05

I know Heartsease. I was clarifying that by introducing a gerund to try and understand the practise/practice thing in this instance, it was just muddying the explanation. I x-posted with you.

Heartsease · 15/10/2010 12:07

Oh sorry BGFB, I did wonder as soon as I hit the post button!

takingchances · 15/10/2010 12:08

A rabbit tail collector would definitely have rabbits' tails, unless he was a sh*t collector and only managed to accumulate one....
Futher clarification: A collector collecting rabbit's tails would be continually going after the same poor creature and lopping off each new tail it grew, or he would be searching for the elusive mutant rabbit with multiple tails.

prism · 15/10/2010 13:42

But the French would say "queues de lapin", not "queues des lapins"- so does this make them inherently illogical?

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