“bird nest” vs. “birds’ nest”

Question

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Shouldn’t the word bird in the first sentence be birds’ as it’s a nest for more than one?

How many donkeys would there be in a donkey sanctuary? Actually, the convention varies hereabouts ... dogs home uses the plural attributive noun. But attributive nouns are usually singular, even when it doesn't appear the logical choice. — Edwin Ashworth, Oct 10 '16 at 21:14

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 10 '16 at 21:10

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Shouldn’t the word bird in the first sentence be birds’ as it’s a nest for more than one?

You could use birds’ here, making it a genitive, but bird nest is something else, namely a compound. Now in the English language, the default grammatical number for the first part of a compound is singular. For example, a car park usually contains more than one car and an ant hill contains more than one ant.

answered Oct 10 '16 at 21:10

Wrzlprmft

4,395

Very true, Wrzlprmft, but both the genitive / attributive choice and the default choice for attributive nouns (with exceptions) have been covered here before. Several times. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 10 '16 at 21:17
But people don't say bird nest do they? Unless perhaps they are talking about the soup... bird-nest soup? – WS2 Oct 10 '16 at 22:41
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I've only heard about birds-nest soup. – David Handelman Oct 10 '16 at 23:21

“bird nest” vs. “birds’ nest”

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