Oh no BBC, not you as well

[OutOfApricots]

There's an article about the Royal family on the BBC website, and in that article is the sentence:

'Competitive sister-in-laws.'

Oh dear me.

Yes! Lord-lieutenant has just scrambled my brain. I haven’t heard or read it enough to have a feel for it.

But that’s because you have removed the primary noun. The noun gets the pluralisation. Once you have removed it you have, in effect, forced the modifier to become the noun. Hence the pluralisation.

I would suggest that perhaps the title Lord is considerably more important than that of Lieutenant, and that they would be described as Lords anyway, so it should really be written as Lords Liutenant.

Historically they were referred to simply as Lieutenant. Their official title was changed in the early years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign to better reflect the dignity and prestige of the modern civilian appointment.

Ah - I didn't know that. Thanks.

They lost me when they started saying "we were sat there". I hate it

There are a lot of historical quirks. It can be so confusing!!

My own English is far from perfect so I don't think I've ever dared to post in Pedant's Corner before.

However it's just occurred to me that my habit of checking the BBC News website every morning, and being exposed to their constant SPAG errors, is probably responsible for my high blood pressure.

I think you're nearly there. The point is that, in everyday speech, the modifier has become part of the noun (because your mother-in-law is very much not your mother). The hyphens contribute to this.

This is an example of everyday speech having different grammatical rules to essay-writing. Modern media use everyday speech rules to be more readable to a wider audience.

See for example "runner-ups". There are many more examples

They always say ‘the government are’ 🙄

Whenever I'm in any doubt about such matters, I ask myself: "What would Stephen Fry say?"😂