My mistake earlier asking if court-martial was a verb, I looked at the term and my brain must have been thinking court-martialing someone (or someone being court-martialed). I guess what I did, in a way, would equate to asking if trial is a verb. ops:

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Looks as though we can blame those folks who invaded England back in 1066 and spread their Norman way of speaking throughout the land.

Per an on-line reference:

>>>
Some words in which the modifier follows the noun form the plural inside the word or phrase, particularly legal terms from French:

attorney general: attorneys general
son-in-law: sons-in-law
court martial: courts martial
armful: armsful / armfuls (the latter is preferred today)
governor-general: governors-general
Knight Hospitaller: Knights Hospitallers
>>>

Same deal currently with all the ISO standards I use. In English it's the International Organization for Standardization (therefore should be "IOS"), but the group is based in France, so instead it's the Organisation internationale de normalisation (which somehow gets abbreviated/acronymed as "ISO", instead of "OIN"). Would have been nice if it were the International Standards Organization (ISO), but that would have made too much sense I guess. :wink:

I'm with you re "court-martials" sounds better (therefore voted for #1), but "courts-martial" is grammatically correct. 8)

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Grands Prix.

Astronomers Royal :P

Now that is an interesting word. Does anyone in the US adopt the English (& Australian!) pronunciation of lieutenant as 'Lef-tenant', or are you all 'loo-tenant' people?

By the way, my vote was for 'Courts-Martial'. With two English teachers for parents, calling them 'court-martials' would have resulted in a clip over the ear!

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Ok, so we all agree it's Courts Martial and not Court Martials. Good, sometimes common sense wins. If it helps, try to think of the modifier as a parenthetical:

courts martial become courts (martial)
Sons-in-law become sons (in-law)
mothers-in-law become (battle-axes)

See how easy that was? Now for a more difficult grammatical question.
Is the plural of Deer Brigade: Deers Brigade, Deer Brigades, or Deer Brigade.

BTW, the verb of trial is try.

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J Pax

I think we all say loo-tenant because when we say "in lieu of" it doesn't sound like "in lef of." Besides, if you have a leftenant, do you need a rightenant? That begs the question, if you have a loo-tenant, can you skip to him?

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J Pax

Who cares? Yeah, as far as I know, all the US pronounces it 'loo-tenant', though I'm also familiar with 'lef-tenant' (did some time on an RAF base).
But anyway, what I really want to know is, which way do Canadians pronounce it?

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I can guess how the french Canadians pronounce it.

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J Pax

Among the military it's pronounced 'lef-tenant' , outside the military most use 'loo-tenant'.

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I heard it on the news just the other day
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And what's with the hyphen? Why not just courts martial?

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Again I say, "Exactly!" If it didn't have the hyphen, it wouldn't be at all confusing to people.

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???

"-ful" is a suffix, not a modifier.

But does Webster's say that the plural of "armful" is "armfulus"?!

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I'm guessing, "loo-tenant-eh"

I could swear that it would be Martial Court.

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That must be a typo. My Webster's Unabridged gives armsful and armfuls, as Maksutov noted. No sign of armfulus.

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