apostrophe

noun [əˈpɑstɹəˌfi]

pronunciation

CMUdict (apostrophe AH0 P AA1 S T R AH0 F IY2) via pipeline/ipa-en.mjs; confirm with a phonetician; no frequency figure, open source

Apostrophe names a figure: a sudden second-person turn of speech to an absent, lifeless, or abstract addressee; the mark foils punctuation, personification foils animation.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Definitions

ling. / rhet. / lit. Rhetorical figure: the speaker suddenly breaks discourse and addresses, in the second person, a person or thing absent, lifeless, or abstract, as if it could listen. Axis sits at that turn. The mark (') is another card. Personification animates without necessary address.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
hist. lex. Arct 1921: Apostrofa, address to the absent as if present, to the dead and to concepts as if alive; rebuke. Apart: Apostrof, the mark '. Brückner skips. Webster APOSTROPHE: (1) figure, (2) contraction, (3) mark. Skeat: Gk. ἀποστροφή; Der. apostroph-ise.

source
Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Apostrofa; Apostrof); A. Brückner 1927 (no apostrof*); Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE); W. W. Skeat 1910 (APOSTROPHE), open source
didact. / rhet. In class, apostrophe keeps second-person address beside personification, allegory, anaphora, epiphora, irony, metaphor, antithesis, oxymoron, hyperbole, simile, onomatopoeia, and rhetoric. Borders among address to the absent, animation without address, and the punctuation mark need review.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
colloq. Loose talk may dump every mark ' under this label. This card keeps one axis: a deliberate second-person turn toward an absent, lifeless, or abstract addressee. Foils: apostrophe mark, personification, anaphora, epiphora, allegory, irony. Apart from a plain vocative without the figure.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Examples

Milton's address to Light at the opening of Book III of Paradise Lost, cited under Webster APOSTROPHE (Rhet.), yields rhetorical apostrophe; the mark in don't is already the grammatical apostrophe, outside this card.

source
Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE: Milton's apostrophe to Light), open source
Morning drill ran on second-person address to an absent addressee; personification returned on the animation-without-address side, anaphora on the opening-lexeme side, the mark ' on the punctuation side.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Source shelf: Arct Apostrofa (1921) beside Apostrof (mark), Webster APOSTROPHE (1913) with three senses, Skeat 1910 (APOSTROPHE, Gk. ἀποστροφή), Brückner with no apostrof* lemma.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
A worksheet that stamped every mark ' as apostrophe erased the split between a rhetorical turn to the absent and a punctuation sign.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Board labels: apostrophe (rhet.) | apostrophe mark | personification | anaphora | epiphora | allegory | irony, keeping second-person address apart from the mark, animation, lexeme, image chain, and sense reversal.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Usage

Casual notes may brand any mark ' as apostrophe with no named axis. Seminar peels layers: deliberate second-person address to an absent addressee; the mark as punctuation foil; personification as animation foil without address; anaphora and epiphora as lexeme foils. Arct keeps Apostrofa on address to the absent and on rebuke; apart, Apostrof on the mark. Webster keeps APOSTROPHE on the figure (Milton to Light) and on contraction plus the mark. Skeat traces Greek ἀποστροφή. Brückner skips. Strip those layers and only a hollow slogan about calling out remains.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Open-book record. In Arct (1921) Apostrofa marks speech turned toward the absent treated as present, toward lifeless things and toward concepts granted life and feeling; also rebuke. Apart: Apostrof, the mark ' replacing an omitted sound. Webster 1913: APOSTROPHE (A*pos"tro*phe); (1) Rhet. second-person address (Milton to Light); (2) Gram. contraction; (3) the mark. Skeat 1910: APOSTROPHE (Gk. ἀποστροφή; Der. apostroph-ise). Brückner 1927 leaves the Polish lemma blank. Derivation under etymology.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Apostrofa; Apostrof); Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (APOSTROPHE); W. W. Skeat 1910 (APOSTROPHE); A. Brückner 1927 (no lemma), open source

Scholarly English marks second-person address to an absent addressee for clarity and pathos. Careful editors discard worksheets that treat every apostrophe mark as the rhetorical figure and discard glosses that never name the address axis. The apostrophe / personification / anaphora / epiphora / allegory border stays debated in seminars. Chronology of the label stays blank until a primary page is cited. Polish counterpart: apostrofa (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Classrooms revisit address talk among tropes and place rhetorical apostrophe next to personification, allegory, anaphora, epiphora, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, litotes, simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, onomatopoeia, rhetoric, and semantics. CMUdict lists apostrophe (IPA /əˈpɑstɹəˌfi/). Polish apostrofa sits in SGJP. Live neighbours include those tropes. Without the second-person address axis the label collapses into punctuation talk or plain vocative talk.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE); CMUdict (apostrophe present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (apostrofa present), open source

Word forms

Countable noun: singular apostrophe / plural apostrophes (editorial regular plural; Webster indexes the singular under APOSTROPHE). Nearby Webster forms: apostrophic (a.), apostrophize (v.t. / v.i.). CMUdict lemma apostrophe present.

forms in use

przypadek	forma
singular	apostrophe
plural	apostrophes (editorial regular plural)
related adjective (Webster)	apostrophic (Webster APOSTROPHIC)
related verb (Webster)	apostrophize (Webster APOSTROPHIZE: to address by apostrophe; to mark with ')
foil neighbour (Webster)	apostrophe mark (Webster APOSTROPHE senses 2-3); personification (live EN)

Word forms: Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE; APOSTROPHIC; APOSTROPHIZE); CMUdict (apostrophe present) · source

Collocations

rhetorical apostrophe

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
apostrophe against the mark

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
address to the absent

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
literary apostrophe

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
distinguish apostrophe from personification

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms apostrofa (Polish counterpart; SGJP present; Arct Apostrofa; check scope at review), address to the absent (loose descriptive neighbour; Arct Apostrofa; Webster APOSTROPHE Rhet.; check scope at review), second-person turn (approximation; Skeat APOSTROPHE; Webster APOSTROPHE; check scope at review), address to the dead or absent (approximation; Skeat APOSTROPHE; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (apostrofa present); M. Arct 1921 (Apostrofa), open source

Antonyms plain narration without address to the absent (contrast: no second-person turn toward an absent addressee; check scope at review), apostrophe mark (axis contrast: punctuation ', not rhetorical address; Webster APOSTROPHE senses 2-3; Arct Apostrof; not a clean antonym of the label alone), personification (axis contrast: animation without necessary second-person address; live EN pair; not always a clean antonym)

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Etymology

English apostrophe rests on Webster's APOSTROPHE card: (1) rhetorical figure of second-person address (Milton to Light); (2) grammatical contraction; (3) the mark itself; neighbouring cards cover APOSTROPHIC and APOSTROPHIZE. Skeat 1910 treats APOSTROPHE as Greek ἀποστροφή (a turning away; ἀπό away + στρέφειν to turn; See Strophe) and lists Der. apostroph-ise. Arct 1921 indexes Apostrofa and Apostrof. Brückner 1927 does not index apostrof*. We avoid copying dictionary wording. Polish counterpart: apostrofa. Axis of this card: sense 1 (rhetoric).

source

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (APOSTROPHE; APOSTROPHIC; APOSTROPHIZE), open source

also

W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910 (APOSTROPHE), open source

also

M. Arct, Słownik wyrazów obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921 (Apostrofa; Apostrof), open source

also

A. Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków 1927 (no apostrof* lemma), open source

Related words

personification , axis foil (animation without necessary second-person address); EN pair already live
allegory , foil along the construct axis (image chain); EN pair already live
anaphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at openings, not address to the absent); EN pair already live
epiphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at closings); EN pair already live
irony , foil along the sense axis (reversal); EN pair already live
antithesis , trope neighbour (opposing members); EN pair already live
oxymoron , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
hyperbole , trope neighbour (overstatement); EN pair already live
litotes , trope neighbour (understatement); EN pair already live
simile , foil along the likeness axis (open pairing with like / as); EN pair already live
metaphor , trope neighbour (transfer); EN pair already live
euphemism , trope neighbour (etiquette softening); EN pair already live
metonymy , trope neighbour (contiguity transfer); EN pair already live
synecdoche , trope neighbour (part for whole); EN pair already live
onomatopoeia , trope neighbour (sound-of-thing echo); EN pair already live
rhetoric , domain of tropes; EN pair already live
semantics , sense and reference neighbour; EN pair already live
apostrofa , Polish counterpart (SGJP present; Webster APOSTROPHE sense 1)

Related entries

The same entry in Polish: apostrofa

Questions and answers

What does apostrophe mean?

It names a rhetorical device in which the speaker suddenly addresses, in the second person, someone or something absent, lifeless, or abstract, as though listening. The apostrophe mark is the punctuation sign '. Personification animates without necessary address. Anaphora and epiphora fasten a chain with one lexeme. A plain vocative without the figure does not replace this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

How does rhetorical apostrophe differ from the apostrophe mark?

Rhetorical apostrophe keeps second-person address to an absent, dead, or abstract addressee (Arct Apostrofa; Webster APOSTROPHE sense 1). The apostrophe mark (Arct Apostrof; Webster APOSTROPHE senses 2-3) marks contraction or possession. Figure axis differs from punctuation axis; casual speech and school shortcuts blur the labels often.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Apostrofa; Apostrof); Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE), open source

How does apostrophe differ from personification, anaphora, and epiphora?

Under rhetorical apostrophe the speaker addresses an absent addressee in the second person. Personification animates a thing or concept without necessary second-person address. Anaphora (Webster ANAPHORA Rhet.) places a shared lexeme at openings. Epiphora (Webster EPIPHORA Rhet.) places it at closings. Axis foil: address versus animation versus lexeme, not a synonym of the label alone.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (APOSTROPHE; ANAPHORA; EPIPHORA); M. Arct 1921 (Apostrofa), open source

Where does the word apostrophe come from, and what forms sit with it?

Webster 1913 ties APOSTROPHE to the rhetorical figure, grammatical contraction, and the mark; APOSTROPHIC and APOSTROPHIZE sit nearby. Skeat 1910: APOSTROPHE (Gk. ἀποστροφή; Der. apostroph-ise). Arct 1921: Apostrofa; Apostrof. Brückner 1927: no lemma. Forms: apostrophe / apostrophes (editorial). IPA from CMUdict: /əˈpɑstɹəˌfi/. Polish pair: apostrofa (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913; CMUdict (apostrophe present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (apostrofa present), open source

Is apostrophe just another word for any vocative?

No. Any vocative can address a present hearer without the figure. Rhetorical apostrophe holds a deliberate turn toward an absent, dead, or abstract addressee as if it could hear. Without that axis the label collapses into punctuation talk, personification talk, or a plain vocative.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)