thats

See also: that's and þats

English

Noun

thats

  1. plural of that
    • 1998, David L. Hall, Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han, page 247:
      As such, they do not have the ontological weight of "Being" and "Not-being," but serve simply as an explanatory vocabulary necessary to describe our world of thises and thats.

Pronoun

thats

  1. (nonstandard, dialect, e.g. Black Country, Northern Ireland) whose, of which, in dialects that require a human antecedent for "whose"
    • 2007, Paul Mavis, review of the 1983 film "Hundra", DVD Talk, March 25th
      set about to make a spoofy fantasy adventure thats focus would be on a gorgeous, blonde, man-hating super-warrior who was subservient to no one.
    • 2008 September 25, jules, “That's or thats? (grammar help please!)?”, in Yahoo! Answers, archived from the original on 2011-07-01; quoted in Mark Liberman, “'That's'”, in Language Log, 2014 March 28, archived from the original on 2014-04-08:
      So I'm writing a paper and I'm saying, "Darfur is a region of western Sudan thats government is…" My question is about the "that"– should it be "that's" (even though that means "that is") or "thats" (with no apostrophe)?
    • 2015, James Harbeck, The future of English includes an apostrophe-less 'thats', The Week
      Let me tell you about a word thats time has come.

Usage notes

A case can be made for distinguishing possessive thats, without an apostrophe, from the contraction that's with an apostrophe, parallel to its and it's or whose and its homonym who's.[1]

Alternative forms

Contraction

thats

  1. Obsolete form of that's.

References

  1. That's, Language Log, March 28, 2014

Anagrams

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