Search over 1.4 million articles by over 600 experts
  1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Grammar & Composition

More from About.com

Browse Topics A-Z

"apostrophe"

By Richard Nordquist, About.com

Definition:

(1) Mark of punctuation used to indicate possessive case or omission of a letter from a word. See:


(2) A figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding. See also: ecphonesis/

Etymology:

From the Greek, "turning away"

Examples (definition #2):

  • "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
    England hath need of thee . . .."
    (William Wordsworth, "London, 1802")


  • "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art"
    (John Keats)


  • "Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art!"
    (Edgar Allan Poe, "To Science")


  • "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. . . . Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."
    (James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)


  • "Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone
    Without a dream in my heart
    Without a love of my own.
    (Lorenz Hart, "Blue Moon")


  • "O platinum-nibbed stylograph, let thy smooth and rapid course trace on this single-side calendered paper those alphabetic glyphs which shall transmit to men of sparkling spectacles the narcissistic tale of a double encounter of omnibusilistic cause."
    (Raymond Queneau, "Apostrophe," Exercises in Style, translated by Barbara Wright, New Directions: 1981)


  • "O stranger of the future!
    O inconceivable being!
    whatever the shape of your house,
    however you scoot from place to place,
    no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
    I bet nobody likes a wet dog either.
    I bet everyone in your pub,
    even the children, pushes her away."
    (Billy Collins, "To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now")

Pronunciation: ah-POS-tro-feeAudio Link

  1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Grammar & Composition

©2008 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.