Learn English – Possessive form of plural nouns

possessives

Which one from following would be correct:

  • woman pilots.
  • women pilots.

And the usage of which one from following options would be correct:

  1. Women's jobs
  2. Women jobs
  3. Woman jobs
  4. Woman's jobs.

I cannot understand which option I should use.

Best Answer

As noted in comments, it's generally (unofficially) discouraged to use "women" or "woman" as an adjective. It's preferred to use "female".

So, while these may be perfectly fine, they are not adjectival uses of "woman":

The woman pilots the plane.
At Airline X, women pilot all of the planes.
*Note that in these examples, "pilot" is a verb, not a noun.

The preferred use would be:

Female pilots were well known as early as the 1960s.

As a note, none of these uses are "possessives". There's no show of ownership at all. It's just describing the type of pilot you're talking about.

This section options 1 and 4 both use the possessive but 2 and 3 do not:

  1. Women's jobs
  2. Women jobs
  3. Woman jobs
  4. Woman's jobs.

So, if your goal is to understand the possessive use, I'll ignore 2 and 3, which I don't think should ever be used, regardless of possession.

Version 1 is plural possessive. If that's what you're looking for, this is your choice. "Women" is plural and the "apostrophe s" makes it possessive.

Version 4 is singular possessive. "Woman" is singular and the "apostrophe s" makes it possessive.

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