Apostrophe

[ə'pɒstrəfɪ] or [ə'pɑstrəfi]

Definition

(noun.) the mark (') used to indicate the omission of one or more letters from a printed word.

(noun.) address to an absent or imaginary person.

Typed by Betsy--From WordNet

Definition

(n.) A figure of speech by which the orator or writer suddenly breaks off from the previous method of his discourse, and addresses, in the second person, some person or thing, absent or present; as, Milton's apostrophe to Light at the beginning of the third book of "Paradise Lost."

(n.) The contraction of a word by the omission of a letter or letters, which omission is marked by the character ['] placed where the letter or letters would have been; as, call'd for called.

(n.) The mark ['] used to denote that a word is contracted (as in ne'er for never, can't for can not), and as a sign of the possessive, singular and plural; as, a boy's hat, boys' hats. In the latter use it originally marked the omission of the letter e.

Edited by Lilian

Definition

n. (rhet.) a sudden turning away from the ordinary course of a speech to address some person or object present or absent explained by Quintilian as addressed to a person present but extended by modern use to the absent or dead: a mark (') showing the omission of a letter or letters in a word also a sign of the modern Eng. genitive or possessive case—orig. a mere mark of the dropping of the letter e in writing.—adj. Apostroph′ic.—v.t. Apos′trophise to address by apostrophe.

Edited by Antony