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If I say "I parked at a few streets distance from the stadium", should 'streets' have a possessive apostrophe? ("…a few streets' distance")

"…a few streets distance" can be rewritten as "…at the distance of a few streets". But 'streets' doesn't really own the distance. Now, I understand that 'possessive' is a misleading term. If I say "my city" I don't mean that I own it. But here, I can't see that the streets have any essential relationship with 'distance', they are just a measure.

So my thinking is that there is no apostrophe. I'd struggle to justify that conclusion, though...

Dunsanist
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is answered at Apostrophe-“s” vs “of ” (Cerberus's Fowler article). Arguably, the apostrophe could be dropped here as this is approaching an associative usage (nine days wonder and nine days' wonder are both used), but I think most people would still prefer to include it. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 20 '17 at 08:13
  • It's also addressed at Why does my spell-checker correct the word lecture's. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 20 '17 at 08:29
  • Your error lies in thinking that an apostrophe-s means that something has to own something. That's not true. – tchrist Jan 20 '17 at 11:29
  • @tchrist, I think that was exactly the point I made, if you read my post. "Now, I understand that 'possessive' is a misleading term. If I say "my city" I don't mean that I own it.' Now--"As reported from the NOAD, genitive in grammar means "relating to or denoting a case of nouns and pronouns (and words in grammatical agreement with them) indicating possession or close association."" But I don't believe the streets are closely associated, I would say rather that 'a few streets' is adjectival to 'distance'. – Dunsanist Jan 20 '17 at 12:06
  • So you could say 'a very short distance' or 'an annoying distance' or 'a few streets distance'. – Dunsanist Jan 20 '17 at 12:09
  • And how exactly is this an 'exact duplicate' of anything? I think your semantic understanding of 'exact' is…er…eccentric. – Dunsanist Jan 20 '17 at 12:14
  • Right at this exact instant, searching Google for 'a few streets distance' brings up this exact page. It most certainly doesn't bring up the other pages you quote. This is the Web. You want someone contemplating this question to do mental gymnastics to find the answer? Be realistic. Google isn't hyper intelligent, it won't bring up hits based on its ultra-sophisticated grasp of grammar. – Dunsanist Jan 20 '17 at 12:24
  • "…at the cost of his life"--"…at his life's cost". There's something going on here other than possession or association. Then again-- "…at the cost of a few dollars"--"at a few dollar's cost". This is clunky, and seems to be stretching the form to its limits. – Dunsanist Jan 20 '17 at 12:34

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