0

If I say "I parked at a few streets distance from the stadium", should 'streets' have a possessive apostrophe? ("…a few streets' distance")

"…a few streets distance" can be rewritten as "…at the distance of a few streets". But 'streets' doesn't really own the distance. Now, I understand that 'possessive' is a misleading term. If I say "my city" I don't mean that I own it. But here, I can't see that the streets have any essential relationship with 'distance', they are just a measure.

So my thinking is that there is no apostrophe. I'd struggle to justify that conclusion, though...

8
  • 1
    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is answered at Apostrophe-“s” vs “of ” (Cerberus's Fowler article). Arguably, the apostrophe could be dropped here as this is approaching an associative usage (nine days wonder and nine days' wonder are both used), but I think most people would still prefer to include it. Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 8:13
  • It's also addressed at Why does my spell-checker correct the word lecture's. Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 8:29
  • Your error lies in thinking that an apostrophe-s means that something has to own something. That's not true.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 11:29
  • @tchrist, I think that was exactly the point I made, if you read my post. "Now, I understand that 'possessive' is a misleading term. If I say "my city" I don't mean that I own it.' Now--"As reported from the NOAD, genitive in grammar means "relating to or denoting a case of nouns and pronouns (and words in grammatical agreement with them) indicating possession or close association."" But I don't believe the streets are closely associated, I would say rather that 'a few streets' is adjectival to 'distance'.
    – Dunsanist
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 12:06
  • So you could say 'a very short distance' or 'an annoying distance' or 'a few streets distance'.
    – Dunsanist
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 12:09

0

Browse other questions tagged .