army ranks

[Jonathan Lighter]

The properly operative, historically informed interpretation is that it's an adjective. Hence "attorneys general."

  But since the "historically informed" consist only of subscribers to this list and several other people, most speakers must inevitably (and understandably ) assume that "attorney" is an attributive modifying a nominal "general."

  For them, an attorney general is some sort of civilian "general," just like the "surgeon general."  So it makes perfectly good sense to address them all as "General."  For such speakers, those of us trained to say "attorneys general" come across as inexplicable weirdos, or possibly just tongue-tied.

  I don't like it one bit, because it means I wasted precious seconds learning the rule, but my influence is limited.

  In Tennessee, every "district attorney" is, in full, a "district attorney general," a position analogous to the "state attorney general." I have heard Tennessee attorneys general addressed as "General" on TV for many years.  Other states, like New York, have one "state attorney general" and numerous "district attorneys."

  JL



sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: army ranks
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Jonathan writes:
>..." General" appears to have been a nominalization (by clipping) of the
>>postpositive adj. in "captain-general." .......
~~~~~~~~~~
So, to bring this back to my question (sorry, Ron Butters), which should we
consider to be properly operative in the case of "attorney general," the
nominal or the adjectival "general?"
AM


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