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Today I saw a comic where one of the characters say:

What's that mean?

Link to the comic

I am not a native English speaker but that sentence puzzled me.

I would personally use the verb to do here but instead there's a 's which I assume is the verb to be contracted.

The other option is that 's here is the verb to do contracted, but I'm not aware of this contraction to be possible.

Is the sentence correct in English? Or is it some "slang" language. The character is not supposed to speak slang or incorrect English at all, so that's why this sentence drew my attention.

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  • What does that mean? I do, you do, he/she/it does. It’s a contraction of "does", I think.
    – Pam
    Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 10:19
  • Can "does" be contracted as 's? I'm not aware of that contraction. Is it correct English? Is it common to contract "does" like that?
    – Cincinnatus
    Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 10:21

1 Answer 1

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“What's that mean?” is a very informal contraction, typical of speech, of the following

What is that supposed to mean?

From Macmillan Dictionary

used when you are annoyed or offended by something that someone has just said

  • A: ‘I just assumed you wouldn’t know.’
    B: ‘Well, what’s that supposed to mean?’
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    Or possibly a swallowed syllable from the pair of t/d sounds in "What does (that mean?)".
    – Lawrence
    Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 10:41
  • 2
    @Lawrence s'pose that's true true as well :)
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 10:44
  • Haha :) . (Too bad there aren't emoticons in upvotes.)
    – Lawrence
    Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 10:46

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