Bosses or Boss’/Boss’s or Bosses’ (English Grammar Explained)

Grammar / By

Bosses is the plural for Boss. Boss’s or Boss’ is the singular possessive form of Boss. Bosses’ is the plural possessive form of Boss. 

Bosses, Boss’s and Bosses’’ are all pronounced the same way.

Bosses

We use Bosses when we want to make the word “Boss” plural.

So it is:

I have one Boss.

I have two Bosses. 

Boss’s/Boss’ 

Boss’s and Boss’ are both acceptable as the singular possessive form of Boss. We use the possessive form of boss when we want to show that one boss owns something.

This is my boss’s/boss’ house.

We need to look after our boss’s/boss’ plant.

Remember we are talking about only one Boss. You can replace boss’s/boss’ with a name if that makes it easier to understand.

This is John’s house.

We need to look after John’s plant.

People tend to prefer the ’s(in this case boss’s) form when we pronounce the final s as we do in boss’s. 

The most important thing is that you chose either boss’s or boss’ and stick to that form in your writing. Do not write boss’s in one sentence and then boss’ in the next sentence.

Bosses’ 

Bosses’ is the plural possessive form of boss. When the noun already ends in “s” and we want to make the word possessive, we need to put the apostrophe after the “s”.

This is our bosses’ house.

In this case, many of our bosses live in the house and they own the house together.

My bosses’ boss is Mark Zuckerberg.

In spoken English, it can be difficult to know whether you are talking about one boss or many bosses in the possessive because boss’s and bosses’ sound exactly the same.

Is it Boss’s Day or Boss’ Day

You can use either boss’s day or boss’ day but I would choose boss’s day.

Read more about how to use “apostrophe s” or “s apostrophe” in our complete guide here. 

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Conor
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