apostrophe (figure of speech)

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:

• Personification
• Ecphonesis
• Top 20 Figures of Speech

Etymology:

From the Greek, "turning away"



Examples:

• "O western wind, when wilt thou blow
  That the small rain down can rain?"
  (anonymous, 16th c.)



• "Hello darkness, my old friend
  I've come to talk with you again . . .."
  (Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence")



• "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)



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



• "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")



• "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")