Is “whom’s” a valid contraction?

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Who’s is valid, as in

Who’s going? (Who is going?)

So surely whom’s should be valid, as in

Whom’s he invited? (Whom has he invited?)

Answer

There is no official list of valid contractions for the English language.

We might be able to logically deduce that whom’s is “invalid” if there were some general syntactic issue with contracting the auxiliaries is or has in this grammatical context (after a wh-fronted object pronoun in a sentence with inversion). But there isn’t; Whom’s is analogous to the very normal use of What’s in the following contexts:

  • “What’s he done?” (for “What has he done?”)
  • "What’s he doing?" (for “What is he doing?”)

So there is no definite answer to your question.

Note that whom itself is considered by some linguists to be on its last legs ("almost an ex-word", Geoff Pullum, "The Coming Death of whom", cited by John Lawler in a post on this site; see also the collection of links in the post "It’s a made-up word used to trick students", Benjamin Zimmer, both on Language Log). Asking about the validity of the contraction whom’s without taking the dubious status of whom into account might be almost like asking about the validity of the contraction thou’rt without considering the obsolescence of thou. In other words, the rarity of whom’s might be nothing more than an effect of the ill health of whom.

Regardless of whether it is "valid", whom’s has seen some tiny amount of contemporary use:

  • Whom’s he calling a coward? Antifa or the do-nothing Police?

  • Going to the intermediate, he wants a new place, but whom’s he gonna take it from?

  • So in a few years when he needs a website whom’s he going to call?

    • Nanci, at 23:11 , "Sales Funnels For Prospects— Got One?", June 3, 2017 by SLASH PODCAST

  • Where is he now?

    Whom’s he kissing?

All of the examples of Whom’s he… that I could find on the internet stood for Whom is he…, not for Whom has he….

For older examples, see Sven Yargs’s excellent answer.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : EmmaV , Answer Author : herisson

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