Definition:
(1) Mark of punctuation used to indicate possessive case or omission of a letter from a word. See:
- Guidelines for Using Apostrophes Correctly
- Apostrophe Exercise
- The Campaign to Abolish the Apostrophe
(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-fee
