Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and I recently got into a weird debate over the phrase “bona fide.” Is it an adjective? A noun? How do you pronounce it? And what does it mean?
Well, first of all, “bona-fide” is a hyphenated adjective that describes some other noun. I have bona-fide good intentions—genuine good intentions. But “bona fides,” with an s on the end, two words, no hyphen, is a noun that means sincerity, good faith, or proof of genuineness. Weirdly enough, despite that “s” at the end of “fides,” this is a singular noun. But it’s so commonly treated as a plural that you can use it either way.
How do you pronounce these words? Well, to be honest, this also doesn’t matter that much. The original phrase is Latin, not English, and there aren’t a whole lot of native Latin speakers to put up a fight about this. The most commonly accepted American pronunciations are “bona-fide” and “bona-fides,” respectively—exactly how the words are spelled.
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