In British usage, some words of French, Latin, or Greek origin end with a consonant followed by -re, with the -re unstressed and pronounced /ər/.
Most of these words have the ending -er in the United States.
The difference is most common for words ending -bre or -tre: British spellings centre, goitre, kilometre, litre, lustre, mitre, nitre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, spectre, theatre, titre, calibre, fibre, sabre, and sombre all have -er in American spelling.
... Many words spelled with -re in Modern French are spelled with -er in both British and American usage; among these are chapter, December, diameter, perimeter, disaster, enter, filter, letter, member, minister, monster, October, November, number, oyster, parameter, powder, proper, September, sober, and tender.
The ending -cre, as in acre, lucre, massacre, mediocre, is preserved in American English, to indicate the c is pronounced /k/ rather than /s/.
After other consonants, there are not many -re endings ...: louvre and manoeuvre after -v; meagre (but not eager) and ogre after -g; and euchre, ochre, and sepulchre after -ch. In the United States, ogre and euchre are standard; manoeuvre and sepulchre are usually spelled as maneuver and sepulcher; ...
The e preceding the r is retained in American-derived forms of nouns and verbs, for example, fibers, reconnoitered, centering, ... fibres, reconnoitred and centring respectively in British usage. ...
Exceptions. ... include Germanic words like anger, mother, timber, water and Romance words like danger, quarter, river.
...
More recent French loanwords retain an -re spelling in American English. ... double-entendre, genre, or oeuvre. ... cadre, macabre, maître d', Notre Dame, piastre, and timbre.
Best Answer
Both versions are OK. Businessmen's club conveys the idea that the club has businessmen as its members. Businessman's club, on the other hand, conveys the idea that this is a club that a typical businessman would join; businessman in that phrase stands for a typical representative of the class of businessmen, and thus, in a way, for the class as a whole, in spite of being grammatically singular.
These are subtly different ideas, but the difference between them rarely makes any practical difference. Both singular and plural versions of such phrases can thus be used for the same purposes, and one can find plenty of examples of both (in both British and American English).
When the relevant noun has a regular plural, any difference between the two versions will be lost in spoken language, and may be lost even in written language, if the writer is careless about the use of apostrophes. It is anybody's guess whether a sign saying Hunters Lodge is intended to stand for a hunters' lodge or a hunter's lodge.