Tag Archives: Fathers Day

pogonosophy

Pogonotrophy is growing a beard. Pogonotomy is cutting a beard (or shaving it off altogether). Pogonology is writing about beards. And so pogonosophy is knowledge about beards – or perhaps wisdom signified (or conferred?) by a beard. Continue reading

Don’t be so possessive

My latest article for The Week looks at the rationale people give for wanting to leave the apostrophe out of Father(’)s Day, Mother(’)s Day, etc.: the fathers, mothers, and others don’t possess the days, so we shouldn’t use the possessive. And so here we see one of the most badly misnamed features in English grammar:

Stop calling possessives ‘possessive’