Nouns

“Natures Family”

Apostrophes, Nouns, Possessives

I saw this on a bottle of body wash.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
The noun “nature” is rarely pluralized, given its dominant definitions.

One definition for which pluralization makes sense is the fundamental disposition or temperament of a person.

However, that particular definition would be inconsistent with body wash.

Instead, the “Natures Family” brand alludes to the botanical elements in the body wash.

Given that no trademark symbol appeared adjacent to the “Natures Family” brand, which would have implied that the lack of punctuation was intentional, I have to conclude that the omission of a possessive apostrophe was an error.

Solution:
“Nature’s Family”

“Swimming Suit” vs. “Swim Suit” vs. “Swimsuit”

Adjectives, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Versus

I have been wondering all summer about the evolution of these, and I finally decided to investigate.

Problem:
Each spelling is considered to be correct, but not everyone agrees which among these three spellings is/are correct.

Explanation:
These three items mean the same thing, but the different spellings here represent historical variance.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “swimsuit” — spelled S-W-I-M-S-U-I-T — 27,700,000 matches
  • “swim suit” — spelled S-W-I-M-SPACE-S-U-I-T — 2,110,000 matches
  • “swimming suit” — spelled S-W-I-M-M-I-N-G-SPACE-S-U-I-T — 313,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used these three spellings by a compound ratio of 88.5-to-6.74-to-1.

This compound ratio seems to reflect the evolution of the compound noun “swimming suit” into the space-free noun “swimsuit”. From what I have seen, “bathing suit” was the original way to describe this piece of clothing. This seems to have morphed into “swimming suit”, especially in the USA. This seems to have morphed into “swim suit” without the I-N-G but still with a space before “suit”, which seems to have morphed into “swimsuit” with no space.

I believe that evolution of this word is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write or type “swim” than to write or type “swimming”, and it is simpler to omit the space than to include it.

Solution:
Use any these three forms, but realize that the most popular spelling today uses “swim” instead of “swimming” and joins “swim” with “suit” without a space.

“… no more frequent then usual.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Prepositions

I heard this recently during a radio broadcast.

Problem:
The word “then” is not a preposition.

Explanation:
The radio broadcaster said a sentence such as “The telephone calls to the radio station during this hour were no more frequent then usual.”

The problem with this sentence is that the word “then” — spelled T-H-E-N — is not a preposition.

Instead, this word is any of the following:

  • adverb, as in “Prices were higher then.”, where “then” means “at that time” in this sentence;
  • adjective, as in “The then president of the club was a nice guy.”, where “then” means “existing” in this sentence;
  • noun, as in “We have not seen a show at the Alley Theatre since then.”, where “then” means “that time” in this sentence.

What the phrase “no more frequent then usual” requires is a preposition, given that the speaker is comparing “more frequent” with “usual”.

The required preposition is “than” — spelled T-H-A-N, not T-H-E-N.

I believe that the common English blunder of using “then” where the preposition “than” is required is due in part to mispronunciation of the preposition “than”, but simple ignorance about these two words certainly could play a part, too.

Solution:
“… no more frequent than usual.”