Definition:
A figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding.
(For the mark of punctuation, see apostrophe [punctuation].)
See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "turning away"Examples and Observations:
- "Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky."
(Jane Taylor, "The Star," 1806) - "Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own."
(Lorenz Hart, "Blue Moon") - "Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness."
(Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818) - "O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?"
(anonymous, 16th c.) - "Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
(John Donne, "Death be not proud") - "Apostrophe! we thus address
More things than I should care to guess.
Apostrophe! I did invoke
Your figure even as I spoke."
(John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Yale Univ. Press, 1989) - "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art"
(John Keats) - "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."
(James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) - "I believe it is the lost wisdom of my grandfather
Whose ways were his own and who died before I could ask.
"Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot,
Little dry death, future,
Your indirections are as strange to me
As my own. I know so little that anything
You might tell me would be a revelation."
(W.S. Merwin, "Sire." The Second Four Books of Poems. Copper Canyon Press, 1993) - "Then come, sweet death, and rid me of this grief."
(Queen Isabella in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe) - "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") - "Dear Ella
Our Special First Lady of Song
You gave your best for so long."
(Kenny Burrell, "Dear Ella") - "Apostrophe is a device by which a speaker begins to address an audience other than the one to which he or she is speaking. Like aporia, it is part of the irony family. In the middle section of his 1860 address at Cooper Union in New York, [Abraham] Lincoln purported to 'say a few words' to the people of the South. In so doing, he spoke to his New York audience by using fictional southern listeners as a frame. . . . Apostrophe is not necessarily restricted to oral communication. A newspaper ad from a tobacco company purportedly directed at young people, but appearing in the business or editorial section of the newspaper, uses young people as a frame through which to reach a different audience."
(James Jasinksi, Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Sage, 2001)
Pronunciation: ah-POS-tro-fee
Also Known As: turne tale, aversio, aversion
