Milk it for all it's worth OR Milk it for all its worth

[audiolaik]

Hi,

I've been poring over the expression all day long. Which version is correct, with or without the apostrophe? I googled both, but the hits they generated were practically identical.

a) Milk it for all it's worth
b) Milk it for all its worth

If both are acceptable, do you detect any difference in meaning?

Audio and AudioJnr

 

[MuttQuad]

Hi,

I've been poring over the expression all day long. Which version is correct, with or without the apostrophe? I googled both, but the hits they generated were practically identical.

a) Milk it for all it's worth
b) Milk it for all its worth

If both are acceptable, do you detect any difference in meaning?

Audio and AudioJnr

a) is the correct one, the contraction standing for it is.

Many English-speakers experience a lot of confusion about the use of apostrophes, and b) is an example of this problem.

 

[lucas-sp]

I would write out this sentence with "it's," as in A.

Um... it's hard to see any difference in meaning, because they both look like transcriptions of the stock phrase "Milk it for all it's worth!" to me (although one looks right, and one looks wrong). I see the meaning of the whole saying rather than the meaning of any particular part thereof.

 

[Fabulist]

I agree with MuttQuad, but note that we would have to write, "Milk it for all its value," because "value" is a noun that requires a possessive adjective. In "it is [= it's] worth," "worth" is a predicate adjective. "Worth" can also be a noun, a reasonably close synonym to "worth." We can ask, "What is his value?" or "What is his worth?" So "for all its worth" makes sense.

To make things worse, in "Milk it for what it's worth," has no such alternative: We can only say, "for what it is worth," not "for what its worth."

 

[lucas-sp]

Well, since we've entered the realms of pure imagination here, I can come up with a series of words in which "milk it for what its worth" would be grammatical:

"Milk it for what? Its worth."

But I think that we all agree that "Milk it for all it's worth" should be correct.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Hello,
When one compares:
Milk it for all it's worth/...all (that) it is worth
with:
Milk it for all its worth/...all the worth that it has.
Then the latter comes closer to what I understand to be the meaning. One takes all that one can get from it rather than whatever its intrinsic value might be.

 

[JulianStuart]

From our dictionary here:

NOUN
the value or merit of someone or something. ■ an amount of a commodity equivalent to a specified sum of money.

A veritable treasure, how shall we measure its worth? We will weigh it and exchange that weight for gold. Then we will have its worth in the the form of gold. Then we can milk it for all its worth and get all the gold for ourselves.

I'm with audio that the apostropheless version is acceptable and it is a meritorious question he has raised