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Apostrophe   Listen
noun
Apostrophe  n.  
1.
(Rhet.) 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."
2.
(Gram.) 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.
3.
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. Note: The apostrophe is used to mark the plural of figures and letters; as, two 10's and three a's. It is also employed to mark the close of a quotation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Apostrophe" Quotes from Famous Books



... face, bloodless as a slum child's, is underlined by a red goatee that punctuates his hair like an apostrophe: "Yes, it's true, when you come to think of it. What's a soldier, or even several soldiers?—Nothing, and less than nothing, in the whole crowd; and so we see ourselves lost, drowned, like the few drops of blood that we are among all this ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... is known as the "tread" (cicatricula) (Figure 1.15 b). From the tread a thin column of the white yelk penetrates through the yellow yelk to the centre of the globular cell, where it swells into a small, central globule (wrongly called the yelk-cavity, or latebra, Figure 1.15 d apostrophe). The yellow yelk-matter which surrounds this white yelk has the appearance in the egg (when boiled hard) of concentric layers (c). The yellow yelk is also enclosed in a delicate structureless membrane (the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... resource is the full moon, Where all sighs are deposited; and now It happen'd luckily, the chaste orb shone As clear as such a climate will allow; And Juan's mind was in the proper tone To hail her with the apostrophe—'O thou!' Of amatory egotism the Tuism, Which further to explain ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... us the true original of the name in Tankersville, the name of one of the knights who came over with William the Norman, and whose name is inscribed on the roll of Battle Abbey. The process was evidently Tankersville, which, contracted, and marked by the apostrophe, became Tan'sville; and, as the Norman blood became, in the course of centuries, more intimately commingled with the ruder but steadier Anglo-Saxon stream, the Norman ville gave way to the Saxon well, and Tan'sville took the form of Tanswell; and Tanswell and Tazewell, variously ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... of the girls—it may be noted in parenthesis—were not pure-minded at all, very much otherwise; but they no more dare betray their natural coarseness in M. Paul's presence, than they dare tread purposely on his corns, laugh in his face during a stormy apostrophe, or speak above their breath while some crisis of irritability was covering his human visage with the mask of an intelligent tiger. M. Paul, then, might dance with whom he would—and woe be to the interference which put him out ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... early discarded verses are of a rather gruesome sort, but more are inspired by contemplation of sublime themes, like this apostrophe to "Eternity," which was published in the "New England Review" ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... text is delimited with underlines (" "). Punctuation and spelling retained as in the printed text. Shaw intentionally spelled many words according to a non-standard system. For example, "don't" is given as "dont" (without apostrophe), "Dr." is given as "Dr" (without a period at the end), and "Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear" (no "e" at the end). Where several characters in the play are speaking at once, I have indicated it with vertical bars ("|"). The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... descriptions are, however, those in which the interests of some thrilling event or crisis of human life or history steal upon the scene, and give it a further meaning, as in the dim streak of dawn rising over St. Abb's Head on the morning of Dunbar, or in the following famous apostrophe:— ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... Fletcher's Boadicea, Act 3. Sc. 1. (Edinbugh, 1812), I meet with the following lines in Caratach's Apostrophe to "Divine Andate," and which seem to corroborate Mr. C. FORBES'S theory (No. 16. p. 228.) on the employment of monosyllables by Shakspeare, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming emotion: at least they appear to be used much in the same way by the celebrated ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... John of Gischala, who occupied the outer part of the Temple. He describes the situation rhetorically as "sedition begetting sedition, like a wild beast gone mad, which, for want of other food, falls to eating its own flesh." And he bursts into an apostrophe over the fighting that went on within ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... panegyric upon her better qualities, which convinced the minister that their misunderstanding was not destined to be of long duration, an opinion in which he was confirmed when the weak and vacillating Henry, at the close of this enthusiastic apostrophe, proceeded to institute a comparison between the Marquise and the Queen, in which the latter suffered on every point. The earnest wish to please of the favourite was contrasted with the coldness of Marie de Medicis, the wit of the one with the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... with a fine apostrophe to Browning as one "who stormed through death, and laid hold of Eternity." Did he indeed do that? I wish I felt it! He had, of course, an unconquerable optimism, which argued promise from failure and perfection from incompleteness. ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of thy espousals to Jesus Christ. I should say to thee: well done thou faithful servant, thou hast labored long and well in the service of thy maker. Thou hast gone to thy well-merited reward." Father Licking continued at some length in this strong strain of apostrophe to the name and memory of his beloved brother, and then entered into reminiscences, in which he said, "I remember well when first I met the departed. It was in the year 1870. We were then students at the preparatory college ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... apostrophe to the heavens, "That inane moon, which makes no response, is beginning to get on my nerves," he soliloquised. "Let me see now! There is certainly master Criqueboeuf, but it is a long journey to the quartier Latin, and when I get there his social engagements may annoy me as keenly as Sanquereau's. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... fellow. Eh, I hope he's not in want." He shook his fist towards his neighbor. "An' jist go on robbin' widows an' tramplin' on orphans till ye perish in the corruption o' yer own penuriousness. Yes, an' me lady Jarvis too!" he cried, abruptly finishing his apostrophe. "She'll have to answer for old Sandy an' the wee thing, see if she don't." The company smiled in spite of his earnestness, all but Elizabeth. She regarded him with big solemn eyes. "Now yous 'll be over to see mother early, mind," he added ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... malfermajxo. Apex pinto, suprapinto. Apiary abelejo. Apish simia. Apocryphal apokrifa. Apogee apogeo. Apologise pardonon peti. Apologue apologo. Apology apologio. Apoplexy apopleksio. Apostle apostolo. Apostolic apostola. Apostrophe apostrofo. Apostrophize alparoli. Apothecary apotekisto. Apothecary's apoteko. Apotheosis apoteozo. Appal terurigi. Apparatus aparato. Apparel vesto. Apparent videbla. Apparition apero. Apparitor ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... a man of "high reputation in gay life;" who, on the fifth perusal of Flirtilla's letter breaks into a rapture, and declares that he is ready to devote himself to her service. Here is part of the apostrophe put into the mouth of this brilliant rake. "Behold, Flirtilla, at thy feet a man grown gray in the study of those noble arts by which right and wrong may be confounded; by which reason may be blinded, when we have a mind to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... Undine, widened to astonishment and passed into apostrophe. "Well, if this ain't the damnedest—!" He came forward and took her by both hands. "Why, what on earth are you doing ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... To understand this apostrophe of my uncle's, made to absent French savants, it will be necessary to allude to an event of high importance in a palontological point of view, which had occurred a little ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... pretty daughter, and the sturdy young blacksmith, were suddenly scattered. The Reader went on to relate how this happened, with ludicrous accuracy, upon the abrupt opening of the door, around the steps of which they were gathered—a flunkey nearly putting his foot in the tripe, with this indignant apostrophe, "Out of the vays, here, will you? You must always go and be a settin' on our steps, must you? You can't go and give a turn to none of the neighbours never, can't you?" Adding, even, a moment afterwards, with an aggrieved air ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... cases, or changes of endings. In English we have three cases,—nominative, possessive, and objective; but, in nouns, the nominative and objective have the same form, and only the possessive case shows a change of ending, by adding 's or the apostrophe. The interrogative pronoun, however, has the fuller declension, who? ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... Now Apostrophe, Caret, Quotation, exclaimed: "We are commas and hyphens combined; We leave out, or put in, or reveal to your kin What you've said, when their backs ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... to reach. Men became accustomed to identify him with the names he cited; he made a loud noise in order to prepare minds for great commotions; he announced himself proudly to the nation, in that sublime apostrophe in his address to the Marseillais: "When the last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust toward heaven, and from this dust sprang Marius!—Marius, who was less great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having prostrated in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... Solomon to the temple is expressed by the apostrophe and s ('s) added to the noun Solomon. When s has been added to the noun to denote more than one, this relation of possession is expressed by the apostrophe alone ('); as, boys' hats. This same relation of possession may ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... by print: neither the Preacher without the Press nor the Press without the Preacher. He was heard to say that in reading Montalembert's Monks of the West he had been struck with the author's eloquent apostrophe to the spade, the instrument of civilization and Christianity for the wild hordes of the early middle ages. Much rather, he said, should we worship the Press as the medium of the light of God to all mankind. He felt that the Apostolate of the Press ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing the Herald Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six months—unless it was business to write that 'Apostrophe to the Heart,' which he called a poem, and which, I don't mind admitting now, I hired his foreman to pi after the copy ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... invitation to love; and the formal digression, sometimes in the form of an inset tale, such as the tale of Poplar in Mirrha (pp. 148-155). Other rhetorical devices cultivated in the epyllion are the long apostrophe, and the sentence or wise saying. Also, these poems employ numerous compound epithets and far-fetched conceits. (Dom Diego goes hunting with a "beast-dismembring blade" [p. 64], and Cinyras incestuous bed in The Scourge "doth shake and quaver as they lie,/As if it groan'd to beare the weight ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... noted, the error is an invisible apostrophe. In phrases containing more than one apostrophe, the relevant word is given ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... on intellect. Men are bidden to be humble, to become as little children; as if there were any humility in thinking incorrectly or not at all; as if the odd, though suppressed, assumption that children have no intellects had any ground in fact. It is surely a true apostrophe...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing at the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on love. He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard in her voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned the discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... editing: Italicized text is delimited with underlines (""). Punctuation and spelling are retained as in the printed text. Shaw used a non-standard system of spelling and punctuation. For example, contractions usually have no apostrophe: "don't" is given as "dont", "you've" as "youve", and so on. Abbreviated honorifics have no trailing period: "Dr." is given as "Dr", "Mrs." as "Mrs", and so on. "Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear". Where several characters ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... (perhaps the only genuine admirer of Marat,)—said, smilingly, to the future painter of Les Sabines, "David, you are wretched because you are neither Duke nor Marquis. I, to whom all such titles are absolutely indifferent, I receive with sincere pleasure all who make themselves agreeable." The apostrophe apparently hit home, for David never returned to Mme. Lebrun's house, and was no well-wisher of hers in later times. But on this occasion she had not only told the truth to an individual, she had touched upon the secret sore of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... said he, putting the remains of a crust into his wallet—and this should have been thy portion, said he, hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me.—I thought, by the accent, it had been an apostrophe to his child; but 'twas to his ass, and to the very ass we had seen dead in the road, which had occasioned La Fleur's misadventure. The man seemed to lament it much; and it instantly brought into my mind Sancho's lamentation ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... first and second day is by the celebrated Pierluigi da Palestrina: that of the third day by Allegri. Baini observes, that the first lamentation of the second day is considered the finest: Palestrina composed it for four voices, besides a bass, which entering at the pathetic apostrophe 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, be converted to the Lord' "every year makes all the hearers and singers, who have a soul, change colour". Bayni, Mem. Stor. T. 1. The lamentations of Jeremiah have the form of an acrostic, that is, the ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... apostrophe to "girls" in the sentence—I have a recollection of the girl's terrified face, but ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... know. The cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick. He then explained this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, "Had ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... An Apostrophe (') denotes that a letter or letters are left out; as, O'er, for over; 't is, for it is. And is also used to show ownership; as, The man's ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... for our present purpose may be ignored. The supper of porridge and milk and a bit of cheese is followed by a reverent account of family prayers, the father leading, the family joining in the singing of the psalm. And as they part for the night, the poet is carried away into an elevated apostrophe to the country whose foundations rest upon such a peasantry, and closes with a patriotic prayer for ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... Dillon, that the animation of his aged kinsman kept his head and body in such constant motion, during this apostrophe, as to intercept the aim that the cockswain was deliberately taking at his head with one of Borroughcliffe's pistols; and perhaps the sense of shame which induced him to sink his face on his hands was ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the door at the tone and substance of this apparently unconsciously uttered apostrophe. She was standing with her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed on the ground. By an irresistible impulse he approached her. "Lady Sara," said he, with a tender reverence in his voice, "there is penitence and ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... captive, pacing round and round those limits of your enclosure. Worse still if you seek those definitions only to justify your overriding another's happiness in pursuit of your own." The boy was not in hearing; this was apostrophe. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... Arabs; the travellers dripping from a Balkan storm compared to "men turned back by the Humane Society as being incurably drowned." Sometimes he breaks into a canter, as in the first experience of a Moslem city, the rapturous escape from respectability and civilization; the apostrophe to the Stamboul sea; the glimpse of the Mysian Olympus; the burial of the poor dead Greek; the Janus view of Orient and Occident from the Lebanon watershed; the pathetic terror of Bedouins and camels on entering a walled city; until, once more in the saddle, and winding through ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... in the apostrophe to Italy (Purg. vi.) where Dante refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme authority ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... examples of the use of this word have been adduced from Shakspeare. These are to be found in the first folio, but are in each case printed with the apostrophe after the t,—it's. This method of writing the word, however, soon disappeared, for in a treatise of Pemble's, printed 1635 (the author died in 1623), it appears as we write ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... answers to the apostrophe, "Hermano!" springing forward at the word, and obeying the command of his sister—for such is she whom Hamersley has accompanied ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... met with great kindness from the chaplain of the Antwerp," was a tender apostrophe of Fanny's, very much to the purpose of her own feelings ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... of saddening yet softened autobiographical reminiscence, over which is thrown a light veil of literary appreciation and topical comment. Here is a typical cadenza, rising to a swell at one point (suggestive for the moment of Raleigh's famous apostrophe), and then most gently falling, in a manner not wholly unworthy, I venture to think, of Webster and Sir Thomas Browne, of both of which authors there is internal evidence that Gissing ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... in the box shifted themselves uneasily under this indignant apostrophe. They had expected to be cajoled. They found themselves threatened. The rest of those present looked on amazed, and held their breath to listen. The speaker seemed perfectly indifferent to the impression he was creating around ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... to understand one word of this apostrophe. She kept silence, terrified, crushed, in front of the ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... then, the Fathers did sometimes, when they had particular occasions to remember the Saints, and to speak of them, by way of 'apostrophe', turn themselves unto them, and use words of doubtful compellation, praying them, if they have any sense of these inferior things, to be remembrancers to God ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... immediately in a line with her head, and half invisible itself, forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a nebulous haze of light, surrounding her crown like an aureola. Her hands are in their place on the keys, her lips parted, and trilling forth, in a tender diminuendo, the closing words of the sad apostrophe: ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... displeasure for attacking the Satanic school, and denouncing Cain as a blasphemous production. "The parsons," he told Moore (letter, February 20, 1820), "preached at it [Cain] from Kentish Town to Pisa." Hence the apostrophe to Dr. Nott. (See Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, by E.T. Trelawny, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... Conservative, entitled "Another Endless Day". The lines are notable chiefly on account of some fearful and wonderful typographical errors. In the fourth line "sublime" should read "sublimer". In the eighth line there should be no apostrophe in the word "stars". In the second column, eleventh line from the end, there should be no apostrophe in the word "fathers", and finally, in the ninth line from the end, "hollow'd" should read "hallow'd". "The Swing in the Great Oak Tree", by Mrs. Agnes Richmond Arnold, is a reminiscent ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Translator has intentionally used both the singular and the plural of the second person in Fougas' apostrophe to Clementine, as it seemed to him naturally required by ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... expresses himself in an eloquent apostrophe to the primitive Earth, over which he previously ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of—'Who and what are you, sir?' And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of soda water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying satisfactorily to the worthy beek's apostrophe. Although, at five o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to look fierce, and retort this amiable inquiry, and with equal thirst for knowledge to demand, 'D—your eyes, if ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You see splendid dressing abroad, but it's mostly upon old people who ought to be sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it's the young girls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charming in the Gymnasium, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... nation to the ambassador of America. They did not apply to this ambassador for a mediation: that, indeed, would have indicated a want of every kind of decency; but it would have indicated nothing more. But in this their American apostrophe, your Lordship will observe, they did not so much as pretend to hold out to us directly, or through any mediator, though in the most humiliating manner, any idea whatsoever of peace, or the smallest desire of reconciliation. To the States of America themselves they paid no compliment. They paid ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it may be thus divided—the two first letters of it are male—the three first female—the four first a brave man, and the whole word a brave woman. Thus: he, her, hero, heroine. A beggar may address himself, and say, mend I can't!—leave out the apostrophe and he still remains a mendicant. Tartar, papa, murmur, etc. may be noticed as doubling the first syllable, and eye, level, and other words as having the same meaning whether read backwards or forwards. Some few by a reverse reading give a different sense ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various

... invited to share. There was as little exact science about it as if I had turned it into frank poetry and exclaimed, "Blow, blow, thou winter's wind!" Knowledge of human nature might be drawn even from that apostrophe, and a very fine shade of human feeling is surely expressed in it, as Shakespeare utters it; but to pray or to converse is not for that reason the same ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it enough for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... George William Curtis, the elegant author of "Prue and I," one of the sweetest books ever written, inscribed to Mrs. Henry W. Longfellow, in memory of the happy hours at our castles in Spain; the magnificent apostrophe to Agassiz; the birthday offering to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; the lines to Whittier on his seventy-fifth birthday; the verses on receiving a copy of Mr. Austin Dobson's "Old World Idyls," and Fitz Adam's story, playful, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... played with the child. Then he burst out: "I say, Poll!" And since Polly paid no heed to his apostrophe: ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... love; but he was doomed to wander, and the affection of wife and babes was not for him. So he made Philosophy his mistress, and his devotion led him to the stake. Surely there was a prescience of his fate in the fine apostrophe of his Heroic Rapture—"O worthy love of the beautiful! O desire for the divine! lend me thy wings; bring me to the dayspring, to the clearness of the young morning; and the outrage of the rabble, the storms of Time, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... True Woman—the latter an anti-suffrage journal. Mrs. Hopper not only writes well; she is also a woman of varied and excellent reading, and the appreciation of the modern classics is displayed in one of her poems—an admirable apostrophe to the character and works of Dante. This poem, which was published some time since, Mrs. Hopper once recited to us, and both mamma and I were struck with the true ring of poesy so apparent ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... of a slender engagement with Cave of the Gentleman's Magazine. One thing is certain, that however unpromising were Johnson's early days at Lichfield, he ever retained a warm affection for his native city, and which, by a sudden apostrophe, under the word Lich, he introduces with reverence into his immortal work, the ENGLISH DICTIONARY: Salve magna parens. (Boswell.) His last visit was in his 75th year when he writes to Boswell:—"I came to Lichfield, and found every body glad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... of the Wordsworthian influence is to be found in the little poem Frost at Midnight, with its affecting apostrophe to the sleeping infant at his side—infant destined to develop as wayward a genius and to lead as restless and irresolute a life as ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... have a legible and neat handwriting and show a knowledge of spelling and punctuation by writing from dictation a paragraph necessitating use of commas, periods, quotation marks, apostrophe. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... made much of the handsome Yankee in Richmond that season would have suspected that the young man looked in his mirror night and morning, frowned darkly at the reflected image he saw there, and said, solemnly, "You are a murderer!" It was by no means a tragic accent in which this thrilling apostrophe was spoken. It was very much in the tone that a woman employs when she looks hastily in the mirror and utters a soft "What a fright I am!" apparently receiving comforting contradiction enough from the mirror to make ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... This angry apostrophe is probably addressed to a child, at the moment when he is intent upon some agreeable occupation, which is now to be stigmatized with the name of Play. Why that word should all at once change its meaning; why that should now be ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... corresponding to the two pure artistic manners that Addison had distinguished. How widely Purney intended to diverge from current poetry can be judged by his definition of the sublime image as one that puts the mind "upon the Stretch" as in Lady Macbeth's apostrophe to night; and by his praise of the simplicity of Desdemona's "Mine eyes do itch." Both passages were usually ridiculed by Purney's contemporaries ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... at least, thought I to myself, I may range undisturbed, and talk with my old friends the breezes, and address my discourse to the waves, and be as romantic and whimsical as I please; but it happened that I had scarcely begun my apostrophe, before out flaunted a whole rank of officers, with ladies and abbes and puppy dogs, singing, and flirting, and making such a hubbub, that I had not one peaceful moment to observe the bright tints of the western horizon, or enjoy the series of antique ideas with which a calm sunset ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... grammar and vocabulary the syllable which may be elided is enclosed in a bracket, and in compound words and phrases the elision is marked with an apostrophe, as ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... Rollo; Nathan and James laughed, and Rollo's mother looked up from her work to listen to this strange apostrophe. ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... write to the king on conjugal affairs!—his majesty having left her majesty only the day before, to show himself to his loving subjects at Palermo. Hem! Campania felix! If we were known to be inditing this unreverential passage, and its disloyal apostrophe, we should, no doubt, be invited to leave "Campania the happy" at a day's notice; whereas our comfort is, that this day three months it is quite possible that it will have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... apostrophe to the ocean could hardly omit a reference to the most destructive conflict of naval warfare within the present century. In one of his supreme stanzas he reserves ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... next resource is the full moon, Where all sighs are deposited; and now It happened luckily, the chaste orb shone As clear as such a climate will allow; And Juan's mind was in the proper tone To hail her with the apostrophe—"O thou!" Of amatory egotism the Tuism,[777] Which further to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... part of "The Canonical Hours," giving its represented foundation of the various acts of worship in the Romish Church throughout the day, from early in the morning to the last service at night. After every fact concerning our Lord, follows an apostrophe to his mother, which I omit, being compelled ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of king James that the eloquent Hall, in his sermon at Paul's Cross, gave utterance to the general sentiment in the following animated apostrophe to the manes of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... betrayed into the above apostrophe by the violence of my sympathies; but the lucid and graphic sentences which precede this moralizing ably sum up the situation during the first week of Hartman's visit. A good deal of wisdom was in circulation: I said some things ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... to obliged to take in the arrangement of the scene, the apostrophe and the gestures of the actress appeared to be unconsciously directed toward Mademoiselle de Vermont, who could not restrain a ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. "O that some courteous ghost would blab it out!" but it cannot be; you and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves, and for ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unskaken ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... original text looked quite nice it suffered from having been typeset either by an apprentice or by someone rather eccentric. For example words with an apostrophe representing the "o" of "not" had the apostrophe consistently in the wrong place, for example "would'nt" instead of "wouldn't". We have very carefully cleaned up this class of error, and hope no more ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... there are other interesting tales. Mr. Foskett has apparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth; but, as he tells us elsewhere that 'Poesy is uninspired by Art,' perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless form. He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by his apostrophe ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... apostrophe, delivered with mournful intensity, Bell retreated hastily behind a post of the veranda, and even Susan Aurora Bulger giggled faintly, with ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... window watering her well-beloved flowers; a child of one of her neighbors was lying in a cradle at her side and she was gently rocking it with her disengaged hand; the child's mouth was full of bonbons, and in gurgling eloquence it was addressing an incomprehensible apostrophe to its nurse. I sat down near her and kissed the child on its fat cheeks, as though to imbibe some of its innocence. Brigitte accorded me a timid greeting; she could see her troubled image in my eyes. For my part, I avoided her glance; ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... must have been exercised and must have grown, had he not been such a good man. In short, and to put it bluntly, had Little-Faith been a worse sinner, he would have been a better saint. "O felix culpa!" exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for us sinners such a Redeemer." An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has put into these four ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... marked by that want of feeling for the exquisite, that dulness of edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is the common note of all German literature, save a little of the very highest. In conversation we do not insist on constant precision of phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of argument. Apostrophe is made natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the situation. Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the voice, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... over it continually as the prevailing atmosphere must prove. The gusto and the mystery are all the more impressive because the means are entirely concealed, except when the writer draws himself up for an apostrophe, and that is not much too often nor always tedious. The style is capable of essential simplicity, though not of refined simplicity, just as a man with a hard hat, black clothes and a malacca cane may be a good deal simpler and more at home with natural things ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... This apostrophe, which certainly appears, now that in cooler moments I recall it, rather rhapsodical, was not uttered viva voce, nor even sotto voce, seeing that its object, Miss Dora M'Dermot, was riding along only ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... Anales de Sevilla, pp. 851, 352.—Carta del Levantamiento de Toledo, apud Castillo, Cronica, p. 109.—The historian of Seville has quoted an animated apostrophe addressed to the citizens by one of their number ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... within my means; the second was beyond them, but it was very good for me to try and do it. I had a long apostrophe to the goddess with my back turned to the audience, and I never tackled anything more difficult. My dresses, designed by Mr. Godwin, one of them with the toga made of that wonderful material which Arnott had printed, were simple, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... wonderfully sublime, was never presented to the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... most persons who could dance, and by some superior souls who could not. Among the latter, the late Lord Byron—whose participation in the dance was barred by an unhappy physical disability—addressed the new-comer in characteristic verse. Some of the lines in this ingenious nobleman's apostrophe are not altogether intelligible, when applied to any dance that we know by the name of waltz. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... Institution) addressed to bird or flame or beast the Indians adopted a poetic license no more significant of polytheism than the flights of fancy of many Christian poets in odes to the moon, to Fate, "to the red planet Mars," to the "wild west wind." Mere impersonation and invocation in apostrophe and paeans are not necessarily worship. Doubtless these spells and charms often arose from a superstitious half-belief, an imaginative freak, such as possesses the civilized visionary who shows a coin to the new moon to propitiate its fancied waxing influence in behalf ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... in the domestic apartments they were discussing this apostrophe of the marshal's. An officer of the army of Egypt said that he was not surprised, since the Duke of Montebello had never forgiven the Duke of —— for the three hundred sick persons ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... acquaintance of the montuca, a large black fly whose horny lancets make a gash in the flesh, painless but blood-letting. All these insects are most abundant in the latter part of the rainy season, when the Maranon is almost uninhabitable. The apostrophe of Midshipman Wilberforce was prompted by sufferings which we can fully appreciate: "Ye greedy animals! I am ashamed of you. Can not you once forego your dinner, and feast your mind with the poetry of the landscape?" Right welcome was the usual afternoon squall, which sent ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... street when apostrophe S had plodded by. Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom's. Got the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour he died yes that's ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... in favour of the derivation a l'arme that the Italian is allarme; some dictionaries even have dare all'arme, with the apostrophe, for to give alarm. It is against it that the German word Laerm is used precisely as the English alarm. Your correspondent CH. thinks the French derivation suspiciously ingenious: here I must differ; I think it suspiciously obvious. I will give him a suggestion ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... only of the lawyers of a neighboring country—to whom malignity imputes a superabundant luxury in words, reproached Watt, against whom they had leagued in great numbers, for having invented nothing but ideas. This, I may remark in passing, brought upon them before the tribunal the following apostrophe from Mr. Rous: "Go, gentlemen, go and rub yourselves against those untangible combinations, as you are pleased to call Watt's engines; against those pretended abstract ideas; they will crush you like gnats, they will hurl you up in the air out ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... beans beyond Cicero's. Newspaper, the, wonderful, a strolling theatre, thoughts suggested by tearing wrapper of, a vacant sheet, a sheet in which a vision was let down, wrapper to a bar of soap, a cheap impromptu platter. New World, apostrophe to. New York, letters from, commended. Next life, what. Nicotiana Tabacum, a weed. Niggers, area of abusing, extended, Mr. Sawin's opinions of. Ninepence a day low for murder. No, a monosyllable, hard to utter. Noah enclosed letter in bottle, probably. Noblemen, Nature's. Nornas, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... apostrophe was followed by a wave of the hand, which indicated that the persons addressed were to follow the speaker, and that they were granted the special favour of a private hearing before his Holiness. Through the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings upon reading it; and tells them with so much energy, that he communicates them. I almost doubt which is more sublime, Homer's Battle of the Gods, or Longinus's Apostrophe ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's complaint in my rude way, with an apostrophe to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... was both writ long before the apostrophe, an' 'course they didn't say nothin' about it. He was well an' happy, he said. She had had only one letter before these for a long time. An' now to ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... But how say you——? [extraneous close quote at end] Footnote 83... She speaks of "liberae," "free women," [in Harper edn. only, second open quote missing] Footnote 90... to tie criminals hands and feet together [no apostrophe after ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... wonderful time here, there's no doubt of that," said Bob, commenting on Herb's apostrophe to the bungalows. "But it will seem nice to get home again, too. I've almost forgotten what the old town ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman

... eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had been elaborating some grievous scheme of injury in her mind since her first assumption of that public position on the Marshal's steps, took the present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe to the relict of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... cried Eugene (he had recovered immediately on embarking), as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in a lower voice reversed his late apostrophe by remarking ('I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend may be endowed with philanthropy enough not to turn bottom-upward and extinguish us!) Steady, steady! Sit close, Mortimer. Here's the hail again. See how it flies, like a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... succeeded in extricating himself from all the windings of the interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too apparent. The written charges were to him what the dog is to the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him here and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some unintelligible question, it passed for profundity with some, and for imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the magistracy sustain any injury; for it is far better that a judge should be reputed imbecile or profound ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... dare to appear in order to speak it with her in the presence of persons capable of judging." Baudoin does not appear, indeed, to have accepted this challenge, but neither does it seem to have discouraged him. He closes the preface of his last volume with this poetical apostrophe to those who are envious of his reputation: "By the mouth of good wits—Apollo holds you in contempt,—Troop so ignorant and bold:—For you profane his beauteous gifts,—And cause thistles to spring up—In the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... attempted the composition of short popular songs which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were labeled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but his labors were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made no sign, she did not seem to hear. At last he launched this apostrophe: ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... kamahele no ka laau ku i ka pali is uncertain. I take it to be a punning reference to the Pali family from whom the chief sprang, but it may simply be a way of saying "I am a very high chief." Kamahele is a term applied to a favorite and petted child, as, in later religious apostrophe, to Christ himself.] ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... This apostrophe, briefly responded to in another voice, gave him time quickly to raise the curtain and show himself, passing into the room with a "Go on, go on!" and a ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... to make their next general parade in the heavens—and fancied you would see our poor, unhappy apparitions gliding through the sky; and, perhaps, exclaim, 'Poor Gilbert; he died in the good cause at last. It seems, however, that the necessity is spared of my making so pathetic an apostrophe. You had the ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... inquisition. I indeed made this sacrifice to prudence with great unwillingness—every day, by confirming Mr. Burke's assertions, or fulfilling his predictions, had so increased my reverence for the work, that I regarded it as a kind of political oracle. I did not, however, destroy it without an apologetic apostrophe to the author's benevolence, which I am sure would suffer, were he to be the occasion, though involuntarily, of conducting a female to a prison ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... apostrophe before the "s" in "butchers," so the reference was clearly to Williamson and not Williamson's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... one knows. The apostrophe to the "Adorable Dreamer" is familiar to hundreds who could not, for their life, repeat another line of his prose or verse. It was "the place he liked best in the world." When he climbed the hill at Hinksey and looked down on Oxford, he "could not describe the effect which this ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... Captain M—-, who, for some time after the departure of the surgeon, continued leaning over the rail of the entering-port, in silent contemplation of the glassy wave, until the working of his mind was expressed in the following apostrophe:— ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... was conducting a tavern he put his barmaids into "bloomers." This daring stroke had its reward; and, by swelling the consumption of beer, perceptibly increased his bank balance. Hence, it is not perhaps unnatural that such widely spread activities should have inspired a lyrical apostrophe: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... to a high, clear shriek, which pierced the heavy rumble of the train and rang throughout the car. The conductor, in spite of the coolness which becomes second nature to men of his profession, turned slightly pale and shrank back before this wild apostrophe, with a thrill of spiritual horror at the solemn meaning of the words, (I thought,) and not because he considered the man a maniac. The fanaticism of Troubleton had already flown far and cast a vague shadow of dread over a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful prolonged lyric delivered at the recent ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... comes forth. The less intimately human the music, the more satisfactorily it emerges. For example, the performer is stirred by the "Tannhaeuser March," as rendered by himself, with its flourish of trumpets and its general hurrah-boys. But he is unmoved by the apostrophe to the "Evening Star" from the same opera. For this, in passing through the piano-player, is almost reduced to a frigid astronomical basis. The singer is no longer Scotti or Bispham, but Herschel or Laplace. The operator may pump and switch until he breaks his heart—but if he has ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... The Voice of Things "Why be at pains?" "We sat at the window" Afternoon Service at Mellstock At the Wicket-gate In a Museum Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune At the Word "Farewell" First Sight of Her and After The Rival Heredity "You were the sort that men forget" She, I, and They Near Lanivet, 1872 Joys of Memory To the Moon Copying Architecture in an Old Minster To Shakespeare Quid hic agis? On a Midsummer ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... relatively, (i.e., given a proper subject), but as if absolutely good—good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal apostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's 'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural sections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have happened? Are you aware what sort of a ridiculous ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Emerson where he, himself, places Milton, in Wordsworth's apostrophe: "Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, so didst thou travel on life's common way in ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... the n was dropped before words beginning with a consonant sound, is often found in old books where a would be more proper; as, an heart, an help, an hill, an one, an use. (2.) Till the seventeenth century, the possessive case was written without the apostrophe; being formed at different times, in es, is, ys, or s, like the plural; and apparently without rule or uniformity in respect to the doubling of the final consonant: as Goddes, Godes, Godis, Godys, or Gods, for God's; so mannes, mannis, mannys or mans, for man's. Dr. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... enlarged the treatment of the thematic combination for this purpose, and now employed it as a sort of accompaniment to Hans Sachs's epilogising praise of the "Master- singers," and to his consolatory rhymes upon German art, with which the work ends. Though the words are serious, the closing apostrophe is none the less meant to have a cheering and hopeful effect; and, to produce this, I counted upon that simple thematic combination, the rhythmical movement of which was intended to proceed smoothly, and was not meant to assume a pompous character, except just before ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... [decidely] is rather a paraphrase than a translation [pharaphrase] the season which succeeded Mrs. Merry's arrival [whith] vainglory [occurs with and without hyphenation] signifying—roundly nothing [signifyng] the dog-star of favouritism [favourite-ism] don't [occurs with and without apostrophe] strength as to their vocal abilities [abilites] a wedding-party in that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent and the most unhappy of her sex. He was bereft of words to utter what he felt: what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous. "Oh, madam!" he began; and finding no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own. "Count upon me," he added, with bewildered fervour; and, getting somehow or other out of the apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to sing. There was no reason though, they both asserted, and sent March away from their conference at least half convinced, why the girl's part could not be greatly amplified. There were various expedients;—a preliminary scene between the girl and her brother; an apostrophe to an absent lover; a prayer. Also instead of being frozen into terror-stricken silence by her ravisher's monstrous purpose, she could just as well be represented as making a desperate resistance. She could plead with him, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... This word, without the apostrophe, Glore, is to be found in Todd's Johnson, and there defined fat. The true meaning is, I doubt not, as above; fat ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden. But whatever be the literary merits of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political doctrines which it inculcates. The poet, in a rapturous apostrophe to the spirits of the great men of antiquity, tells us what he expected from Pulteney at the moment of the fall ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... text, when "wont" is used as a contraction for "will not" or "would not" the author did not insert an apostrophe. This original style is preserved in all instances. In other contexts the author also uses "wont" to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... this use of religion bears a striking resemblance to certain primitive practices in which God was conceived as a glorified medicine-man, and the healing of the body strangely confused with spiritual regeneration. Bishop Gregory of Tours once addressed the following apostrophe to the worshipful St. Martin: "O unspeakable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purgative! superior to all the skill of physicians, more fragrant than aromatic drugs, stronger than {223} ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... may take long years of civil tumult to raise them? May we not find the explanation of this strange phenomenon in the contrast of Catholic unity with Protestant diversity? "Thou that killest the prophets!"—the system to which this apostrophe can be applied is doomed. And it matters little who ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... Scottish names, such as M'Clelland or M'Kail, sometimes use a regular apostrophe and sometimes a reversed apostrophe. In this transcription, the ASCII apostrophe character (') has ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... under the great trees. A good burst of tears was near, but she would not give way to that; Sandie would see it. He would be back presently. And he would be putting his question again; and whatever in the world should she say to him? For the hundredth time the bitter apostrophe to her father rose in Dolly's heart. How could he have let her be ashamed of him? And then another thought darted into her head. Had not Mr. Shubrick a right to know all about it? Dolly was almost distracted with her confusion ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... vehement manner, to tell what I had done with Mr. Henley and her dear young lady. She more than ever disconcerted me. Her exuberant passion addressed itself alternately to me and her master. Her tears as well as her words were abundant, her urgency and ardour extreme, and she ended her apostrophe with again conjuring me to tell what was become of her dear, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... triumphantly assert that my pretended enthusiasm for our social undertaking was merely passion for a man; that it was not for the sake of an idea, but for the sake of a man, that I had run off to Equatorial Africa? No—I don't love your brother—I shall never love, still less marry!' This heroic apostrophe was, however, followed by a flood of tears, which, when sister Clara wished to interpret them in my favour, were declared to be signs of emotion at the offensive suspicion. I received the proposal in a similar way. When Clara hinted to me that I was in love with ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in "Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. And how? Is it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, "Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... air, shouting and brandishing his blaze in every direction. The paroxysm of joy was short, however, and when quiet was restored, in the deeper darkness—for Brother Fleming's torch had gone out—a tall man arose from near the middle of the congregation. He had a bushy brown beard, a little apostrophe nose, childish china-blue eyes, and a thin high voice which gave the impression upon hearing it that he was at the very moment trying hard to squeeze through the eye of his needle, spiritually speaking. I recognized him as Brother ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... and no one who heard Dickens, during that eventful month of December, will forget the sensation produced by the great author, actor, and reader. Hazlitt says of Kean's Othello, "The tone of voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe 'Then, O, farewell,' struck on the heart like the swelling notes of some divine music, like the sound of years of departed happiness." There were thrills of pathos in Dickens's readings (of David Copperfield, for instance) which Kean himself ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... "I remembered that apostrophe and that look very well, when I went to bed about an hour later, nearly drunk, in the large room papered in white and gold, to which I was shown by a tall, broad-shouldered footman, who wished me ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... This apostrophe Mr. Granger perfectly understood—it meant that, with the advent of Clarissa, happiness had fled away from Sophia's dwelling-place. He did not trouble himself to notice the speech; but it ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... tell his story much better, not even Scott could drive it onward and sustain the verse at a high level with greater energy, or decorate his narrative with finer description of scenery, or give more intensity to the moments of fierce action. The splendid apostrophe to Greece ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... that Satan hath mingled. Surely, if this be so, the poet is in the right, "Audax omnia perpeti. Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas:" audacious mortals are grown to a fearful height of impiety; and we must cry out in Scripture language, and that emphatical apostrophe of the Prophet Jeremy (chap. ii. 12), 'Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid: be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.'... If you are in covenant with the Devil, the intercession of the blessed Jesus is against you. His ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... answer to some apostrophe to their bliss from Isabel, "it's the greatest imaginable satisfaction to have lived past certain things. I always knew that I was not a very handsome or otherwise captivating person, but I can remember years—now blessedly remote—when I never could see a young girl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... until he had so suddenly rushed away home. It was, therefore, possible that there might prove to be some important meaning in what he had said. At first "Cobbler" Horn had gathered nothing intelligible from the impassioned apostrophe of his excited little friend; but, by degrees, there dawned upon him some faint gleam of what its meaning might be. "The sec'tary!" That was the quaint term by which Tommy was wont to designate Miss Owen. But their conversation had been drifting in ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... have been retained as in the original text. Inconsistent usage of American versus British spelling has also been retained. In the original text, positive contractions (He'll, I'd, I'll, I'm, they've, etc.) were printed with half spaces before the apostrophe. These spaces have been ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... Faustus then proceeds to enjoy all that the new order of things promised. He commands Homer to come from the realm of shades to sing his entrancing songs. He summons Helen to appear before him in the morning of her beauty. The apostrophe to her shows the vividness ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... quaint apostrophe, he commenced groping about over the floor—not for the chain, but the key, which he knew Gregorio had left, after releasing his leg from the clasp. The mayor-domo had either forgotten, or did not think it was ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... returning shortly with a well-thumbed volume, which the B.A. opened and selected Satan's famous apostrophe to the Sun for explanation. Samarendra was speechless. After waiting for a minute, the B.A. asked what text-book he studied in physics and was told that it was Ganot's Natural Philosophy. He asked ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... getting a glimpse once more, of the smoky chimneys of Glasgow! Finally, I have nearly caught the infection myself, and unless I escape out of the moonlight presently, I dare say I also shall become quite lack-a-daisical, and commence a poetical apostrophe to my native village of Hardscrabble—or rather to plump little Susan Somers, my first love, at the 'madam's' school, who affected my weak mind and susceptible heart to that extent, that in her bewildering presence my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... by their experience that our neighbours across Channel surpass us in the knowledge of your sex?" he said to Miss Dale, and talked through Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine Maria,' still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Apostrophe" :   apostrophize, punctuation, rhetorical device



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