Husbands or Husband’s or Husbands’ (English Grammar Explained)

Grammar / By

Husbands or Husband’s or Husbands’ (English Grammar Explained)

 

Husbands is the plural for Husband. Husband’s is the singular possessive form of Husband. Husbands’ is the plural possessive form of Husbands. 

Husbands or Husband’s or Husbands’ are all pronounced the same way.

Because “Husband” is usually singular, “Husband’s”’ is usually correct. Husbands’ would only be correct if you are talking about several husbands.

Husbands

We use Husbands when we want to make the word “Husband” plural.

So it is:

I have one husband.

I have two husbands. 

Husband’s 

Husband’s is the singular possessive form of husband. We use the possessive form of husband when we want to show that one husband owns something.

This is my husband’s house.

I need to look after my husband’s plant.

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

This is John’s house.

We need to look after John’s plant.

Husbands’ 

Husbands’ is the plural possessive form of Husbands. 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 husbands’ house.

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

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

Conor
Latest posts by Conor (see all)