apostrophe
Pluralapostrophes
- 1A written character (') serving as a punctuation mark across many languages and, in rare cases, as a diacritical mark.
The editor flagged a missing apostrophe in the contraction.
In most style guides, the apostrophe marks the possessive form of a noun.
Note
The mark's name records its first job. Greek apostrophos meant the 'accent of elision', the sign that something has been left out, as in a contraction. It goes back to a verb meaning 'I turn away', a root it shares with the rhetorical address. The mark later took on the possessive as well. Claire Cock-Starkey's Hyphens & Hashtags (2021) calls it controversial since its inception, a fair warning that its use is often disputed.
- 2An exclamatory passage in which a speaker breaks off to address an absent person or a thing directly, as though it could hear.
The eulogy rose to an apostrophe, the mourner speaking directly to the one who had died.
Her sonnet ends with a striking apostrophe, calling on the sea to witness her sorrow.
Note
Here the Greek 'turning away' is close to literal: the speaker turns from the audience to address someone else, often someone absent. The word works both ways. Apostrophe can name the figure in general, as in L. Langley's 1835 verse 'Apostrophe a bold digression makes,' and an apostrophe is one such passage. It shares only a distant root with the punctuation mark, since the two reached English as separate words.
- 3The arrangement of chlorophyll grains lying perpendicular to the outer surface of a plant cell, in contrast to epistrophe, where they spread along that surface.
Microscopy revealed a clear apostrophe, the chlorophyll grains aligned perpendicular to the cell wall.
The researchers counted how many cells held their chloroplasts in the apostrophe position rather than in epistrophe.
Oppositeepistrophe
Note
A botanist's term that only makes sense beside its partner, epistrophe. It is usually spoken of as a position. Harold Wager, writing in 1905, places chloroplasts 'in the apostrophe position,' where they look flattened and lens-shaped. In epistrophe they show an oval or nearly round outline instead. That outline under the microscope is the practical way to tell which arrangement a cell holds.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of apostrophe apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
From French apostrophe or Latin apostrophus, from Ancient Greek ἀπόστροφος (apóstrophos, 'accent of elision'), a noun use of an adjective from ἀποστρέφω (apostréphō, 'I turn away'), itself from ἀπό (apó, 'away from') plus στρέφω (stréphō, 'to turn').
From Latin apostrophe, from Ancient Greek ἀποστροφή (apostrophḗ), from the verb ἀποστρέφω (apostréphō, 'I turn away'), formed from ἀπό (apó) plus στρέφω (stréphō, 'I turn').