Definition:
A phrase in which possession is indicated by the preposition of followed by the possessive form of a noun or pronoun, as in a friend of Erin's.
See also:
Examples and Observations:
- The Dude: Who are you, man?
Knox Harrington: Oh, just a friend of Maudie's.
(The Big Lebowski, 1998) - We heard the news from a neighbor of Alice's.
- "My bedroom, like that of my potential roommate's, is cell-like in both its size and simplicity, furnished with only a bed and a small chest of drawers that easily accommodates the little I brought with me."
(David Sedaris, "Naked," 1997) - "Not infrequently someone questions a construction that reads like this: 'He is a political associate of the President's.' Since the of indicates the possessive (genitive), the someone argues, why tack on another possessive in the form of 's? Grammarians differ as to the origin and explanation of the construction, but they do not question its well-established legitimacy. . . .
"[T]he double genitive is of long standing, idiomatic, useful and here to stay."
(Theodore Bernstein, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins. Farrar, 1971) - "Despite their apparent redundancy, double genitive constructions such as a friend of ours or no fault of Jo's are established English idiom. Grammarians since C18 have puzzled over the way the construction iterates the of genitive with a genitive inflection on the following pronoun or personal noun."
(Pam Peters, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004) - "A good many of us do use some double genitives and do not notice that they are double. Some language liberals argue that in Informal and Casual contexts the double genitive is idiomatic and not overkill, but few editors of Standard English will be likely to let it stand in Formal writing. It's either friends of my sister or my sister's friends; even in conversation, friends of my sister's may grate harshly on some purists' ears."
(Kenneth Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, 1993)
Also Known As: double possessive, oblique genitive
