How to pluralize "State of the Union" without an additional noun? [closed]
I've read the following sentence on Facebook tonight:
I may have inadvertently convinced a co-worker to vote for Trump with the statement, "Can you imagine his state-of-the-unions?"
Is it State-of-the-Unions or States-of-the-Union?
Far better would be State-of-the-Union addresses, but now my curiosity is piqued.
Solution 1:
I would argue that the 'State of the Union' is an address to the nation, and therefore the plural of State of the Union Address is 'State of the Union Addresses' since "State of the Union" is modifying the word Address.
Solution 2:
This is complicated, because "State-of-the-Union" is being used as a noun when it isn't really one.
- If "State-of-the" was being used to describe a Union, then Union would be pluralised to Unions
- If "of-the-Union" was being used to describe a State, then State would be pluralised to States.
- But "State-of-the-Union" is an abbreviation of "State-of-the-Union Address". Within the full title, "State-of-the-Union" is therefore an adjective.
I would personally suggest that "State-of-the-Union" is a single pseudo-noun, which should hence have the pluralising "s" at the end.
Solution 3:
"State-of-the-unions" is entirely appropriate in informal spoken English. The context you give is quoted speech, so I would say it is fine. In fact, the utterance would have less force if any other option were chosen.
Solution 4:
You're looking for "States of the Union".
"State of the Unions" would imply that Trump is giving one speech about many different Unions.
This rule also applies for mother-in-law (=> mothers-in-law) and commander in chief (=> commanders in chief). It's explained here:
Words that are pluralized in the middle?
Solution 5:
The key here lies in the fact that "state of the union" isn't just a phrase, it's a title - State of the Union - which is understood to be the name of a speech.
If we have multiple of those things, we don't want to pluralise the states, nor to we want to pluralise the unions: we want to pluralise the entire title - State of the Unions.
The fact that this happens to be the same as if we were trying to pluralise "unions" (e.g. in the sense that we were referring to a single address about multiple unions) is just an unfortunate side-effect. It's the context, however, that removes the ambiguity between "State of the Union(s)" and "State of the Union(s)".
"State of the Unions" implicitly refers to "State of the Union Addresses," in the same way that "Harry Potters" refers to "Harry Potter books," not a single book about multiple wizards of the same name (which would be very confusing).
Consider another example: "The Fast and the Furiouses." If "The Fast and the Furious" weren't a title, understood in-context to refer to a movie, you'd complain that "Furiouses" doesn't make sense. Of course, in reality, you wouldn't likely complain about this pluralisation (except possibly to suggest including the word 'movies'!)
Try writing each variation out in full, parenthesizing the omitted word (addresses) and then contracting to the shorthand from there.
- States of the Union (address) - States of the Union - one address about multiple states of a single union.
- State of the Unions (address) - State of the Unions - one address about the state of multiple unions.
- States of the Union (address)es - State of the Unions - multiple addresses about the state of a single union.
The confusion comes from the fact that these are three distinct concepts, two of which just happen to share a shorthand. The fact that there are "two potential nouns to pluralise" is a red herring - you want to pluralise the whole title.
Of course, it would be easier to avoid ambiguity altogether and simply say "State of the Union addresses."