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But that did not solve his problem, his mother's birthday was next week, he had counted on Arsenal beating Manchester and if that idiot of a referee had not awarded that idiotic penalty.

I am wondering what's the plural form of the bolded part. Is it "these idiots of referees"? It doesn't sound right.

Laurel
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deliguy
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1 Answers1

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There is no good plural equivalent

The book The Mental Corpus: How Language is Represented in the Mind explains why there isn't one. "Those [plural] of [plural]" is the least bad of all the options, but it's extremely rarely used.

Instead, you can just call them those stupid referees or even those dumbass referees.

(Also note that the plurals go this->these and that->those, but switching these and those usually works anyways.)

Laurel
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  • Can I ask how you were able to get that perfect source for this query? Like, how did you know where to look? – AIQ Nov 08 '19 at 04:57
  • @AIQ It's the 5th result when I search Google for `"those idiots of"` (including the quotes). This may have something to do with Google's [search personalization](https://www.wsoaonline.com/does-your-internet-history-effect-google-search-results/), but I'm not sure. – Laurel Nov 08 '19 at 05:04