@jayles - if you look for these expressions in Google Books, none that I could find have apostrophes before the nineteenth century. The apostrophe was the last punctuation mark to be adopted into English and its use wasn't really fixed until the nineteenth century, as you point out. In fact one of the earliest uses of the apostrophe was the much aligned 'greengrocer's apostrophe' for plurals ending in a vowel, especially with foreign words, as in this from Alexander Pope (1735):

"Comma's and points they set exactly right."

This appears to have been quoted (with apostrophe) without comment by Johnson in his original 1755 entry for comma. But by the 1785 sixth edition, the apostrophe has mysteriously disappeared.

But in any case it's nothing to do with elision or replacing a missing letter; it is the Saxon genitive replacing 'of', as Wendy said way back when. It is the day of St Valentine. Dave's car, Pete's wife, a mile's distance - these all end in e but we still use an apostrophe.

Correction - Burnet's book was published in 1724

@jayles: nice try

London Magazine 1738 - unfortunately Google Books has combined phrases from two adjacent columns -

L "are liable to so many Changes and to such sudden and unlooked for Alterations"
R "that his Majesty should communicate all the Secrets of his Cabinet"

to give:

"that his to so many Changes, and to such Majesty should communicate all the sudden and unlooked for Alterations, Secrets of his Cabinet"

But even if that was what they had written, 'sudden' here would be an adjective and not part of this particular idiom.

Searching Google Books for ' "all of the sudden" john dryden' brings up two quotes:

"All of the sudden she fell into the agony of death"

"[who] made the step to Popery all of the sudden, without any previous instruction or conference"

But it turns out that neither of these are from Dryden. The first is from an article on the 'controversy between Dryden and Stillingfeet' , possibly by Sir Walter Scot, published in a book of Dryden's poetry. The second is also quoted in a book of Dryden's poetry, but turns out to be from a book on the Stuarts by (Bishop) Gilbert Burnet, published in 1688, referring to the Earl of Sunderland, one of James II's advisers. A rather interesting contemporary account of the fall of James II, as it happens.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=6_xCAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA756&lpg=PA756&dq=%22made+the+step+to+Popery+all+of+the+sudden%22&source=bl&ots=QUT3XTmYEh&sig=8UTQXgZ3T91zllaV6OwrmmG7jk8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qy3_UsqyFtGThge3zYGgCA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22made%20the%20step%20to%20Popery%20all%20of%20the%20sudden%22&f=false

On the other hand, Dryden does seem to have a penchant for:"on a sudden":

"Ten times more gentle than your Father's cruel, How on a sudden all my Griefs are vanish'd!"

"all on a sudden there broke out terrible Thunders and fiery Flashes"

"and that by which Leonidas, after being carried off to execution, on a sudden snatches a sword from one of the guards, proclaims himself rightful king"

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22all%20the%20sudden%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1,cd_min:1600,cd_max:1868&lr=lang_en#lr=lang_en&q=%22on+a+sudden%22+john+dryden&tbas=0&tbm=bks&tbs=lr:lang_1en

A look at Ngram suggests that 'all of the sudden' had a little flourish around 1700, but these two alternative versions were rather short lived.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22all%20of%20the%20sudden%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1,cd_min:1679,cd_max:1723&lr=lang_en

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=all+the+sudden%2Call+of+the+sudden%2Call+of+a+sudden&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Call%20the%20sudden%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Call%20of%20the%20sudden%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Call%20of%20a%20sudden%3B%2Cc0

@jayles - even the people at Warner Bros who decided on the movie title?

And Happy Valentine's Day to you too Paula.

But to the business in hand, if it was one week, we'd need an apostrophe to be grammatical - 'one week's notice', 'in a minute's time', 'a mile's walk from here' - i.e. notice of one week, the time of a minute, a walk of a mile.

So logically, in the plural it should be 'two weeks' notice', 'in five minutes' time', 'three miles' walk for here'. And this is what the Guardian and Economist style guides (in the UK) stipulate. It is also what any dictionary will show you in the examples. It is also the majority use in books. However, so many people leave off the apostrophe these days that I wonder if it is not becoming acceptable in informal writing.

I've blogged about this fairly recently:
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-ten-minute-walk-ten-minutes-walk.html

@Moonwaves - Of course "to have Hobson's choice" does have the meaning of no choice.

@Moonwaves - I suggest that you have a look at the quotes from various books above. I can't see any idea there that there is any implication of having no choice.

Let's take the joke about hope as read. The 'chances' one is quite interesting as where I come from (the UK), I'm pretty sure "You've got two chances" means exactly that: first one chance, then another.

But it seems that in the States there is an idiom:"You have two chances, slim and
none", to which some people add "and Slim just left town". But I would think you would need the whole idiom to give it that meaning. Australians have something similar to mean no chance: "You've got two chances; yours and Buckley's", or "Buckley's and Nunn (None) ". But there are also plenty of examples of two chances being used literally:

"When you're betting, you've got two chances of winning: you can take the pot there and then, or you can have the best hand" - The New Yorker 1994.

I don't think you can really just extrapolate idiomatic use of one word to a vaguely similar word. Unless you can show us some examples.

@Jasper - the survey just counted the number of instances, not correct usage. But I think most people who do use whom use it correctly. There's so-called hypercorrection of course - 'Whom shall I say called' - which purists would call an error, but not everyone agrees on that one.

@jayles - Hemingway may have written the novel 'For whom the bell tolls' but he took the title from a poem by John Donne (1572-1631), the last three lines of which are:

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Don't think you can really mess around when quoting the greats.

As for 'to whom', I would still put 'whom' after a preposition (the only time EFL books insist you use it), and you can't really strand the preposition here, as in a question - 'To whom are you writing / Who are you writing to'. In any case it's such a fixed (and relatively formal) phrase that I think it'll stay around quite a bit yet. For example I tend to use 'If I was' (rather than 'If I were') in hypothetical conditionals, but probably wouldn't say 'If I was you, I'd ...' - 'If I were you' is such a fixed phrase.

All of us whom-disdainers have apparently been getting it wrong all along. According to a survey at Wired Magazine, men using 'whom' in their profiles on certain dating sites get 31% more responses from women than those who don't.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10398

I think this was only ever a convention in certain areas, such as football and possibly rugby kit and jockeys' outfits (especially hoops). The stripes in striped ties are usually diagonal, occasionally horizontal, very rarely vertical. A sergeant's stripes are V shaped, but more horizontal than vertical, and a zebra's stripes go every which way.

Hoops are by definition inappropriate for flat areas, and to my mind both hoops and bands imply some depth. I'd only ever use stripes for those Breton shirts with narrow horizontal navy stripes, for example. Context is everything, and if someone started talking to me about their stripy jumper or socks, I'd naturally assume they were horizontal. On the other hand, if they were talking about wallpaper, I'd assume the stripes were vertical.

Here's something which might be apt:

"Badges appear in the mid-sixties on the breast of the jersey and in 1871 the first English International Rugby team bore a large ... Later, horizontal stripes were monopolized by Rugby players, and vertical ones became the insignia of the Association player " - English costumes for sports and outdoor recreation 1970

This makes me wonder if HS is thinking particularly of football. (Wikipedia certainly refers to the Celtic strip as green hoops, with hooped stockings). In which case, these things come and go, for how long have people talked about 'strip' for example? This ngram graph would suggest only since after WWII.

Like jayles, I've never thought there was any directional restriction on the use of the word stripe, and there are plenty of references to horizontal stripes relating to clothes in 19th century books, but first, about that flag:

"Be it enacted, etc., That, from and after the fourth day of July next, the flag of the United States be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be twenty stars, white, in a blue field. " - US Statute 1818

"Strabo and Pliny describe their (the Druids') clothing as a kind of vest and breeches, light and neat, their hair long, a collar about their necks, and ... The third was, a broad stream or facing like a scarf, crossed with horizontal stripes, reaching round his neck, and to the bottom of his clothing "- Encyclopædia of Antiquities 1825

"It [a black silk bonnet] was ornamented round the crown by ponceau satin bows, and the brim had horizontal stripes of the same colour - Belle Assemblée; Or Court and Fashionable Magazine 1828

"When a shield is divided into several horizontal stripes of alternate colours it is called barry " - The Curiosities of Heraldry 1845