“Oh, for Heaven sakes!”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Possessives

I often hear people say this.

Problems:
1. A possessive apostrophe-S (‘s) is missing.
2. The noun makes much more sense in singular form.

Explanation:
Even in speech, one can hear when a possessive apostrophe-S is missing.

The English noun “sake” (not the Japanese noun) means interest, benefit, advantage, motive, purpose or cause. For example, “for the sake of Jim” means for the benefit of Jim.

We can rewrite “for the sake of Jim” (“for the benefit of Jim”) as “for Jim’s sake” (“for Jim’s benefit”). It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say “for Jim’s sakes” (plural). That would be analogous to saying “for Jim’s benefits”, which most people would not say because one vague, all-encompassing benefit is enough!

Apparently, the original expression was “Oh, for God’s sake!” This expression got softened to “Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”, which got converted into the problematic expression.

I believe that “Oh, for Heaven sakes” supports my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to say “Oh, for Heaven sakes” than to say “Oh, for Heaven’s sake”; saying the latter requires one to pause between “Heaven’s” and “sake” so that the listener hears the two S sounds.

Letting the expression devolve further, we get the original, problematic expression: “Oh, for Heaven sakes!” It’s as if the speaker is indicating that he knows that an S sound belongs somewhere, so he puts it at the end of the expression, where it sounds as if it might belong.

Solution:
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”