Oil traders have profited handsomely from the recent rise in oil's price.
Is this grammatically right?
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KillingTime
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See for example https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15679/saxon-genitive-usage-question – Stuart F Jul 20 '23 at 11:31
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1Does this answer your question? Why do we say a "hotel room" and not a "hotel's room"? // "Oil's price" would only be used idiomatically to show a more particular association than the unmarked 'the price of oil': 'The major problem with using argan or or coconut oil is the oil's price'. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 20 '23 at 12:52
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When we're talking about the price of some commodity, we almost always say the price of X rather than X's price. See Ngram.
We use possessives for price mainly in phrases like member's price, manufacturer's price, and so forth, which would mean the price a member pays for something or the price the manufacturer pays to produce something.
Peter Shor
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Normally, you shouldn't say "oil's price"; "oil" is not one of the inanimates with which you can use this construction (ship, earth, party, …).
However, the minority using this construction is so numerous (pehaps 200 hits in a Google research), that it becomes unrealistic to say that it is not acceptable: "oil's price".
LPH
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