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Post by Tone on Aug 8, 2008 20:08:06 GMT
[Thread title changed -- I've left all the other posts with the original title. pd.]
Dave M wrote:
>Well, we SAY the "s", so our choices work like this:
a month worth of newspapers - doesn't reflect what we say, so can't be right<
Sorry, but I've got to disagree with the "can't be right".
It might be what "we" (you?) say, but I'd be quite complacent to write "a month worth", using it adjectivally.
Consider "tuppence worth", not "tuppence's worth", or even "a truck load", not "a truck's load".
Tone
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Glyn
Bronze
Posts: 87
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Post by Glyn on Aug 9, 2008 9:29:56 GMT
Is "worth" appropriate with "month's"? A month's worth (monthworth?) of days seems vaguely possible - despite the imprecision - but newpapers to the value of a month? I'd prefer "a month's supply" - with the apostrophe, Tone! And I think that it's "twopennyworth/tuppenceworth" and that the amount carried by a truck is a truckload - though "the truck's load exceeded legal limits". Though it's a logical extension of "pennyworth" (not that English conforms to logic!) I don't think "poundworth" exists, so, like Dave M, I imagine, I'd go for "a pound's worth of salt" and "two pounds' worth of salt", which, of course, are different from "a pound of salt" and "two pound(s) of salt". I don't think I'd ever ask for a "pound worth" of salt or a "month worth/supply of newspapers".
Glyn
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Post by Tone on Aug 9, 2008 20:00:20 GMT
Glyn, But surely "worth" can apply equally to quantity as to value.
Thus "a month worth" = the quantity that would accrue in a month.
Tone
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Post by Alan Palmer on Aug 9, 2008 22:21:51 GMT
But would anyone use a phrase like "a month worth"?
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Post by Pete on Aug 10, 2008 11:25:15 GMT
But would anyone use a phrase like "a month worth"? Certainly not that I have ever heard.
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Post by Tone on Aug 10, 2008 20:16:32 GMT
>Certainly not that I have ever heard.<But I have. (And seen it written.) E.g. "A month work (or a week worth) of work", when when one is counting the number of days on which work was carried out, but not the calender duration over which the work was done. Tone
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Post by Dave M on Aug 11, 2008 13:28:54 GMT
Now that I think about it, I've certainly heard the singualr, non-possessive, noun used in front of "worth", and sometimes use it that way myself. If packing items so as not to use too many boxes, I'd certainly say something like those make a box-worth, not "a box's worth". Similarly there's a whole breakfast-worth of mushrooms on the lawn. Yet I'd definitely say this new recorder can save a whole week's worth of programmes.
Dunno why.
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Post by Tone on Aug 11, 2008 20:25:47 GMT
Thanks, Dave.
>Yet I'd definitely say this new recorder can save a whole week's worth of programmes.<
I think that might be because: a) although you probably wouldn't, there would be the potential to sit watching them for a month! b) you might be thinking along the lines of those programmes that could be recorded during one month.
In both cases we are back to my point of a calender month, and that's where the possessive case springs to the fore. My point of singular non-possessive (adjectival) was applicable to a sum total which, additively, would be the same length as a month, but might take more than a calender month to accrue.
Tone
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noel
New Member
Posts: 14
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Post by noel on Aug 14, 2008 17:16:31 GMT
Tone: I think you are confusing a calendar month (e.g. August) with a callander month, which is a four-week holiday in the Trossachs.
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