Butcher knife" or "Butcher's knife?

October 19, 2009 8:09 AM

[EnglishFilter]: "Butcher knife" or "Butcher's knife?"

I'm looking over a poetry manuscript and came across the lines:

“Pierre, get up here with your butcher’s knife.
We’re having frog’s legs for hors d’oeuvres tonight!”

Is there any convention regarding butcher/butcher's?

A quick Google yields 81,500 results for the possessive and 340,000 for the non-possessive. FWIW, the Wikipedia entry on the object is the non-possessive.

Thanks, Hive!

posted by AAAAAThatsFiveAs to writing & language (16 comments total)

Butcher's. The design is the knife of a butcher. The other option implies butchering knife to me.
posted by Solomon at 8:13 AM on October 19

"Butcher's" is technically correct, but "Butcher" is also acceptable and, in your example where the usage is part of a quote, I think more realistic.
posted by applemeat at 8:25 AM on October 19

A butcher knife is a type of knife

A butcher's knife is a knife which belongs to a butcher. It may also be a butcher knife, e.g., the butcher's butcher knife, or the butcher's bread knife.
posted by Rumple at 8:28 AM on October 19

Butchers' Knife - a knife belonging to more than one butcher
Butcher Knife - a type of knife used by a butcher (see: Baseball Glove)
posted by blue_beetle at 8:42 AM on October 19

Banker's hours. Grocer's apostrophe. Plumber's crack.

Yeah, butcher's knife. Shied away from, maybe, because "snife" gets mangled together unpleasantly in speech.
posted by rokusan at 8:43 AM on October 19

(see: Baseball Glove)

Bad comparison: the glove doesn't have the same relationship to the baseball as the knife to butcher.

And for that matter: it's definitely catcher's mitt and first baseman's glove, not "catcher mitt" or "first baseman glove", which sound ridiculous.
posted by rokusan at 8:44 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (Merriam-Webster, 1961) lists butcher knife but not butcher's knife. Granted, the dictionary is from 1961 so usage may have changed in the intervening 48 years.

However, if you're taking a survey, "butcher's knife" sounds more natural to me.

I think Rumple's and blue beetle's argument which would limit a grammatical possessive strictly to indicating ownership is a red herring. The same page of Webster's Third on which I found butcher knife also had butler's tray as a certain style of tray, regardless of whether the tray in question was actually owned (or even used) by a butler or not. These things go on a case-by-case basis and there's no single rule which applies to all of them.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:56 AM on October 19

In my old-style (RP) British English I've never heard of a butcher knife. Maybe it's an American usage?
posted by anadem at 9:03 AM on October 19

These things go on a case-by-case basis and there's no single rule which applies to all of them.

This. Anyone who tries to cite examples of similar phrases which use an apostrophe as some sort of "proof" is operating under the misguided notion that the English language has to make sense all the time. It doesn't have to, and it doesn't.

Butcher knife.
posted by 23skidoo at 9:19 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]

The OED says:

butcher's knife, also butcher-knife, a particular kind of knife used by butchers; also, any large, strong-bladed knife of many uses

In my experience, compound words are sometimes marked in the OED with a hyphen, even when they can be used without it, although there are no quotations for "butcher knife" without a hyphen.

And personally, I've always heard butcher's knife (1744) rather than butcher knife or butcher-knife (1822).
posted by grouse at 9:22 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]

It's both.

It's like some people say scissors and some people say scissor. Both are correct.
posted by Zambrano at 9:31 AM on October 19

In dialogue, Butcher knife is more accurate. In narration, Butcher's knife is more appropriate.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:33 AM on October 19

Butchers' Knife - a knife belonging to more than one butcher
Butcher Knife - a type of knife used by
... butchers
Butcher's knife - a knife belonging to a specific butcher.

[butchered knives: most knives most butchers use, or have you ever seen any of them treat their knives well...as well as many knives most other people use]
posted by Namlit at 10:11 AM on October 19

Stop with all the "correct" and "accurate" stuff, jeez. There's no "correct" here.

You can use either. I prefer "butcher's knife", which sounds less crude.

Then again, it is a rather nasty instrument.
posted by rokusan at 10:33 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]

While you're at it, what about "frog's legs" vs. "frog legs" in the same quote? I think it would sound off to me if one used the possessive and the other didn't.

I personally like the sound of the possessive versions for poetry, but in normal conversation I say "butcher knife" and "frog legs".
posted by pocams at 11:55 AM on October 19

Languages have a tendency to simplify over time. This is commonly seen in compound nouns, for instance, which might begin as two words, then evolve to two words separated by a hyphen, and then become a single word: bed post, bed-post, bedpost. I'm pretty sure the same happens with possessives -- I just can't think of any examples right now.

In any event, there are various forms that compound nouns can take, and these are dictated by usage, not by hard-and-fast rules.
posted by dhartung at 10:57 PM on October 19