Hey, quick question.

[conuly]

One Star of David.
Two Stars of David?

Comments

[polydad]

Yes. Or in Hebrew, Mogenim Dovid, plural of Mogen Dovid, Shield of David. (Vowels in Hebrew being sort of user's choice.)

best,

Joel

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

David was one king but you have two stars.

[sporks5000.livejournal.com]

so... how do they differentiate between them? is one of them "The other star of David"?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

I guess?

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd agree with that too.

[peebs1701.livejournal.com]

For pluralization? Yes, that looks right. It's kind of like you have one Attorney General and two Attorneys General.

I'm still not sure what to do with Jack-in-the-Box though. Jacks-in-the-Box seems wrong because you have more than one box, Jack-in-the-Boxes seems wrong because there's more than one Jack, but Jacks-in-the-Boxes just looks (and sounds) weird.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

But a "Jack-in-the-Box" the the name of the toy. So you'd have 2 Jack-in-the-boxes just like you'd have 2 cardboard boxes or two Barbies.

Mother in law is the one that always gets me. Linguistically I learned that either mothers-in-law or mother-in-laws are acceptable. I like mother-in-laws, because the in-law part goes with it like Jack in the Box. She isn't MY mother, so I'm not pluralizing mother, if that makes sense. Luckily, I only have one MIL (for more reasons than just grammatical ones!), so unless there is a mother in law convention and I have to say, "Look at all the mother in laws!" then I don't really have to worry about that one too much.

[conuly]

But Jack-in-the-Box is also the name of a chain restaurant, right? So... call them "Jack-in-the-Box toys" and save yourself the angst!

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

I'd say jacks in boxes.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Two Stars of David is correct, but in colloquial speech some people do tend to assume a hyphenation, i.e. two Star-of-Davids, so a person who used the hyphens could probably get away with it in informal writing.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Note that 'two Jack-in-the-boxes' is correct, since the hyphenated term 'Jack-in-the-box' is a noun denoting a specific object.

You wouldn't say 'Jacks-in-the-box' unless there was more than one little springy guy crouched inside it, nor 'Jacks-in-the-boxes' unless you had more than one multiple-occupancy Jack-in-the-box.

If you're talking about the restaurant, its name is Jack In The Box, no hyphens; it's a proper noun, so it's capitalized, just like Black Angus (which is also a breed of cattle.) Two Black Anguses; two Jack In The Boxes.

[conuly]

But the hyphenated mother-in-law can be (and pedantically is!) pluralized as mothers-in-law.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

True that, and it's for the very same reason:

"For hyphenated forms, the pluralizing -s is usually attached to the element that is actually being pluralized: daughters-in-law, half-moons, mayors-elect. The Chicago Manual of Style says that "hyphenated and open compounds are regularly made plural by the addition of the plural inflection to the element that is subject to the change in number" and gives as examples "fathers-in-law," "sergeants-in-arms," "doctors of philosophy," "and courts-martial"

....in the case of two Jack-in-the-boxes, the element that is subject to the change in number is the box, not the Jack. However many boxes you may have, there is only one Jack inside each of them.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Possessive 's is much easier, since it's a clitic, not a noun inflection! So it always goes at the end of the whole noun phrase.

("The Star of David's colour"; "The King of Spain's daughter"; "The man who saw me yesterday's wife".)