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I was listening to the news on my car radio recently when I heard a reporter say that the U.S. government was being sued by a group of “states attorneys general”. I’ve heard that term before and knew that the use of the plural was correct, but it still sounded odd to me. Then, a couple of days ago, a friend wrote a Facebook post to suggest that the plural of stage manager should be stages manager. His reasoning was the aforementioned example of attorneys general. So, I had to ask myself, “What is the rule regarding the pluralization of compound nouns?” Well, since this is English, it turns out that it’s rather complicated.

Let’s begin with the basics. A compound noun contains two or more words which, combined, make up a single, definable noun.

1. They may be strung together to make up one word, like redhead or teacup.
2. They might be hyphenated, such as mother-in-law or passer-by.
3. They could be open form, i.e. separate words which, when placed together, become a unique noun. Examples of open form compound nouns include our friends attorney general and stage manager.

Question resolved? Not quite.

Attorney general and stage manager, while both open form compound nouns, are not actually the same type of nouns. In English, we judge compound nouns by the importance of the two words which have been compounded, and the order in which they appear.

Let’s take the noun attorney general. It is a job description meaning the chief legal advisor for a state or country – the #1 attorney. So, the most important word of the compound is the noun attorney. The second word, general, is an adjective describing what type of attorney we are talking about. Also known as a postpositive adjective, it follows the noun or pronoun it describes. Thus, attorney general is a head-first compound noun. The most important part of the compound goes first. Therefore, when we pluralize the noun, we add an s to the most important word: attorneys general.

Stage manager, however, is not a head-first compound. A stage manager is the person who manages the stage. Manager and stage, both nouns, have equal significance in the compound. In this instance we pluralize the last word in the compound: stage managers.

In French (and many other languages), the kind of placement of noun and modifier we see in attorney general is normal, but in English it is rare. Most often you’ll see these occurring in legal or official terms and, oddly enough, when talking about food.

Recognizing postpositive adjectives, or head-first compounds, is essential to understanding the pluralization of English compound nouns. Here are some other examples of head-first compound nouns and their plurals:

• Whiskey sour – whiskeys sour
• Pound sterling – pounds sterling
• Notary public – notaries public
• Poet laureate – poets laureate
• Professor emeritus – professors emeritus
• Chicken Kiev – Chickens Kiev

When a noun is modified with a preposition or infinitive you pluralize the noun, since the noun is considered the most important part of the compound. Very often, but not always, these compounds are hyphenated.

• Mothers-in-law
• Brides-to-be
• Passers-by
• Rites of passage

If neither word in a compound is a noun, but together they create a noun, the last word is pluralized.

• Go-betweens
• Higher-ups

It’s English. Nothing is easy.