Doctor's Appointment or Doctor Appointment

I often wonder why it is so common to hear a person say, "I have a doctor's appointment."


The noun phrase "doctor's appointment" is possessive. It is an appointment that the doctor possesses, not the patient.

So technically when a patient is speaking about his or her appointment with a doctor, the patient should say I have a doctor appointment. "Doctor" modifies "appointment" and tells what kind of appointment the patient has.

A "doctor's appointment" could be an appointment the doctor has with his girlfriend, his psychiatrist, or his dentist (or any other person for that matter).

Think of it this way, do you ever hear a person say I have a dentist's appointment?

Unfortunately, "doctor's appointment" still seems to be the preferred phrasing as exhibited by the screen shots and by Grammar Girl's take on the situation.

The following is a comment from Grammar Girl in response to a question about this subject on on4/30/2007 4:49:09 AM.

I've looked this up in a bunch of different places. I found conflicting answering, none of which seemed definitively convincing. I prefer "doctor appointment" because it makes more sense to me (it's my appointment with the doctor, so doctor is modifying appointment), but "doctor's appointment" seems to be more common.Sorry I can't be more helpful!

Here is my personal favorite of the screen shots (note the name of the web site).

How will people ever get it straight when a site named Health in Plain English can't even get it?

Language Peeves - "I've got to" vs "I have to"

From a reader -

I would like to hear your take on people saying, "I've got to..." rather than "I have to..."

The comparison here is between two phrases with the modal verb "have" that are almost identical semantically.

Both "I have got to" and "I have to" are used to indicate an obligation that has been imposed upon the speaker by another person (if the speaker was talking about a self-imposed obligation, the modal "must" would be used).

Both phrases are grammatically correct and the only real difference is the formality. "I have got to" is generally considered less formal than "I have to."

Language Peeves - Loose vs Lose

A language peeve from a new friend and fellow blogger Only Half Nuts -

I think my biggest peeve is people interchanging loose and lose. (As in, I want to loose weight instead of lose weight...or loosing your mind instead of losing it...which is what happens to me when I read this mistake:)

This is purely a spelling error and it is an annoying one indeed.

Here is one way to help people remember the proper spelling of each word:

In order to lose weight, you need to lose an "o" from the word "loose." And if your clothing is too loose it is probably because the additional "o" in the word "loose" adds more space between the "l" and the "s" in the word "lose."

Language Peeves - "These" vs "These ones"

From a reader -

Something I hear around here from two different people, both college grads, is the use of "these ones" rather than just "these."

The word these is a deictic pronoun which means that it is almost always accompanied by a gesture of some sort to indicate which particular objects the speaker is referring to.

When a speaker is pointing to an object and says "these ones" adding the plural pronoun one to the deictic pronoun these does not add any pertinent information (though it is actually a grammatically acceptable dialect variation).

By the way, the linguistic sense of the word deictic is defined by the Free Dictionary as, "Of or relating to a word, the determination of whose referent is dependent on the context in which it is said or written. In the sentence I want him to come here now, the words I, here, him, and now are deictic because the determination of their referents depends on who says that sentence, and where, when, and of whom it is said."

Language Peeves - Where Are You At?

From a reader -

I used to monitor the HAM 2-meter frequency which is for local radio communications. Most of the people asked location by saying, "Where are you at?" I always wanted to ask, "What's the difference between 'Where are you?' and 'Where are you at?'"

The word where, by semantic nature, includes the preposition at, so asking someone where they are is the same as asking "at what location are you?"

That said, it would be redundant to ask the question, "At what location are you at?"

Language Peeves - "Went Missing"

A reader recently commented that it really bothers him when news headlines report a missing person by using the phrase "went missing" instead of "is missing."

In regards to this language peeve, the difference between "went missing" and "is missing" is a bit more involved than one might initially think...not only are the verbs in the phrases different, the verb type and tense are different as well. These verbal differences result in semantic differences, and the choice of using one phrase rather than the other may or may not be intentional.

Went is the past tense form of the verb to go. To go is an action verb.

Is is a present tense form of the verb to be. To be is a verb of being that is considered a linking verb.

Semantically, action verbs imply that choice is involved because people choose their actions, whereas linking verbs simply form an association between a subject and its complement. So, saying that a person "went missing" implies that that person chose to go missing and saying a person "is missing" implies that there was not a choice and that whatever happened was against that person's will. Additionally, because went is past tense, "went missing" leaves open the possibility that the person is no longer missing.

The choice of using one phrase rather than the other may be intentional if the possibility exists that the missing person is on the lam or it could just be that a copywriter was lazy and didn't give much thought to the semantics of the chosen verb.

Language Peeves - Don't Feel Badly for Linking Verbs

A reader recently asked me to write about one of her language peeves. This reader can't stand it when a person says he or she is "feeling badly." This statement makes her think that the person has a problem with the sensitivity of his or her fingertips and therefore cannot feel things properly. Indeed, semantically, that is what "feeling badly" implies. The proper way for a person to express the feeling of being physically unwell is to use the statement "I 'feel bad'."

How can this be when feel is a verb and badly is an adverb and adverbs modify verbs?

The answer is that adverbs modify action verbs and feel is what is known as a linking verb. Semantically, linking verbs behave differently than action verbs. Here is a good example: another linking verb is am and that is why, when responding to the question "how are you," the response is "I am good" not "I am goodly."