1)The corporeal, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual sides of human life have all been stirred by the hurricane the likes of which has never been seen in the history of the Earth.
From The Vakhtangov Sourcebook by Andrei Malaev-Babel
2)They finally destroy him in a steel works, in a fight to the death the likes of which have seldom been seen on the screen.
From Movies of the 90s by Jürgen Müller
"The likes of which" is both followed by have and has, and the result of Google book search is almost a tie.
What is the correct usage?
Best Answer
In the first example, the singular verb "has" is the incorrect conjugation. It disagrees in number with its plural subject, "likes." The second example is the correct one. This time, the plural subject, "likes," is satisfied in number by its verb, "have."
Reading through the responses to your question, I notice that there is confusion as to the identities of the subjects of the verbs "has" and "have." Respondents have offered "hurricane," "fight," or "death" as potential subjects. These are misconceptions. The subject in both sentences is "likes." I'll attempt to break it down.
Take a look at this part of the sentence:
This is what is called a genitive relative clause. It’s a relative clause because although it contains a subject (likes) and a verb (has been), its interpretation relies on information in the preceding clause—specifically, the noun "hurricane," to which the pronoun ("which") refers. If we wished to eliminate this dependency, we could rewrite the clause, replacing the pronoun with its target noun (plus article).
As you can see, "the likes of the hurricane" is what is meant by "the likes of which." All we have done so far is to convert a pronoun to a noun. I think that in this construction, it is easier to spot the subject of the clause. Are you beginning to notice the issue with how the verb has been conjugated? If not, don’t worry; there’s more to the explanation.
Let’s focus now on the genitive phrase "the likes of the hurricane." A genitive phrase is used to indicate a relationship between two nouns. In this particular construction, "hurricane" is made to possess "likes" by way of the proposition “of." You may be familiar with another construction of possession formed by adding an ‘s to the end of a noun. For our intents, the two constructions should be interchangeable here. We’ll momentarily convert to the ‘s construction of possession and see if it brings clarity to what is being referenced.
Now, what has never been seen in the history of the Earth? The hurricane? Or its likes (i.e. equals, counterparts)? Its likes have never been seen. If we'd wished to write about the hurricane itself, then we shouldn't have brought its likes into the picture.
So that I'm not accused of having crucially altered the construction of the sentence with this transformation, let's rewind a step and analyze from there.
Again, the likes have never been seen, but that begs the question: “The likes of what?” We cannot leave it at that, so we append descriptive information—“of the hurricane"—clarifying to what the likes belong. It is the likes "of the hurricane" to which we now refer, just as we would the truck of the mailman or the claws of the cat. In no known universe would it be correct to say "The claws of the cat is meowing." It could only be so in a universe the likes of which have never been seen—or perhaps in a universe the like of which has never been seen. Either will do.