<p>Boys soccer team. Shouldn’t that be Boy’s soccer team or Boys’ soccer team? </p>
<p>Does anyone know if Boys soccer team is indeed an acceptable usage?</p>
<p>^^^I have never seen an apostrophe for Boys or Girls soccer. But maybe now I’ll start noticing.</p>
<p>Well, we have a local childrens’ dance group.</p>
<p>The boys’ soccer team would belong to the boys. The boys soccer team (no apostrophe) would use boys as an adjective and therefore would have only boys on it. To further obfuscate:</p>
<p>The old boys at the school owned the soccer team and called it the Boys’ Team, but since it was only comprised of girls, it was the Boys’ girls soccer team. </p>
<p>Alternatively, you could hypothesize an owner whose name was Boy, in which case it could be Boy’s girls soccer team. Or how about Boy’s boys soccer team?</p>
<p>^^^ Oh boy! 
Is boy (adjective) soccer team also correct?</p>
<p>dmd77: Thanks for the clarification. I knew a student of the British quantum chemist S. F. Boys. So if he (Boys) had set up a boys soccer team, it would be Boys’s boys soccer team? Also, that explains childrens’ dance group. Clearly, it belongs to the childrens.</p>
<p>How about rude questions like:</p>
<p>“How zit going?” – What can one say but “Grate!”</p>
<p>– and – that most invasive of queries (read - none of your business):</p>
<p>“How are you doing?” – EXCUSE ME?! Once you’ve regained your normal color you reply “I doing well, thank you (you, who doesn’t know the difference between a bidet and a water cooler).”</p>
<p>Whatever happened to “How are you?”?!</p>
<p>Just occurred to me–if Boys’s son had a soccer team, then it would be Boys’s boy Boys’s boys soccer team. Unless Boys had two sons, making it Boys’s boys Boyses’ boys soccer team. (Sorry, <em>wince,</em> the only thing I really learned from Feynman was recursions in English.)</p>
<p>I would like to issue a general apology for inspiring QuantMech to create that post. </p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Accepted…</p>
<p>my brain hurts.</p>
<p>QuantMech’s recursive brand of humor was given free reign (another one of my pet peeves) in post 228.</p>
<p>What’s the pet peeve surrounding “free reign”, Marite? I’ve been trying to figure it out, but “keep coming up empty”—LOL!</p>
<p>^ Actually, the correct term is “free rein” as in letting a horse assume a measure of freedom as opposed “keeping a firm hand on the reins”; differs substantially from “free reign” which evokes the rule of an enlighted despot.</p>
<p>One can have a lot of fun with free rain, or free range.</p>
<p>Free reign is what enlightened despots promise: It’s shear hypocracy!
Now, Queen Elizabeth, the well-known horse-lover, both reigns and reins.</p>
<p>^ and given she does so in Britannia, in the rain as well.</p>
<p>Inspired by another thread in the Parent Cafe, I was going to post something about picking up free rein chickens at Trader Joe’s. But I think the collective groaning would deafen me. (Actually laughed out loud at dmd77’s post #229.)</p>
<p>QuantMech:</p>
<p>Well, those free rein chicken have got the bit between their teeth, right? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, or a chicken, either.</p>
<p>QuantMech: well, it is obvious to me that you are to the manner borne…</p>
<p>(NOTE: I have seen both “to the manner born” and “to the manor born”; I prefer “to the manor born” as more snobby.)</p>
<p>(And should I, while I’m discussing synonyms for rich, mention how often I hear “hoi polloi” used to mean rich… when it doesn’t.)</p>
<p>Rein vs reign—Of course! See Poetsheart slapping her palm against her forehead----duuuuhhh…!:p</p>
<p>Dmd:</p>
<p>Many years ago, there was a BBC TV series called To the Manor Born. It was very funny. The problem for me is that, as my English was still shaky, it made me think that To the Manor Born was the correct spelling. Ugh! </p>
<p>[BBC</a> - Comedy - To The Manor Born](<a href=“http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/tothemanorborn/]BBC”>BBC - Comedy - To The Manor Born)</p>