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Apostrophe   /əpˈɑstrəfi/   Listen
Apostrophe

noun
1.
Address to an absent or imaginary person.
2.
The mark (') used to indicate the omission of one or more letters from a printed word.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Apostrophe" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... 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, fine ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... necessity He is our "refuge and strength," in our perils He compasses us about with songs of deliverance, his life is our perfect example, his death is our perfect atonement. Well might the Apostle interrupt the course of his argument with the grateful apostrophe, "Unto you, therefore, which believe, He is precious;" and exhort them "that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The text presents us ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... 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

... he murmured—an apostrophe which caused the future statesman a paroxysm of amusement—"I am exceedingly glad to see you. I hope you like London. We're great friends, aren't we? And when you grow up, we're going to be greater. I don't want you to have anything to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... her experience in 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, Lapland, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... 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, the glance, the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... these men are gradually being forgotten, although a stray sentence or paragraph may still occasionally be heard, such as Wendell Phillips's reply to those who hissed his antislavery sentiments, "Truth dropped into the pit of hell would make a noise just like that," or Edward Everett's apostrophe to "that one solitary adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state and bound across the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... speaking, both classes are well indicated by saying, "they are obedient" and "we are submissive." In another way leaving the person who is spoken of, he changes from one to another. This is called specifically Apostrophe, and affects us by its emotional character and stimulates the hearer, as in the following stanza (I. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Senor Perkins modestly. "They are some reflections on—I hardly dare call them an apostrophe to—the crater of Colima. If you will permit me to read them to you this evening, I shall be charmed. I hope also to take that opportunity of showing you the verses of a gifted woman, not yet known to fame, Mrs. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... the above 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

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

... 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 ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his dying apostrophe:— ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... 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

... in the elevated position he aspired 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 Rome ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... against his country to be happy.... When you knew that the tyrant's fall was prepared and inevitable you returned to Paris on the 9th of August. You wanted to go to bed on that evil night.... Hatred, you said, is insupportable to me and (yet) you said to us 'I do not like Marat,' etc." There is an apostrophe of nine consecutive pages against Danton, who ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... used as a modifier. You see that this word, which I have written on the board, is the word robin with a little mark (') called an apostrophe, and the letter s added. These are ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... 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 ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman

... 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? ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... 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

... Prometheus utters no sound—it is Vulcan, the agent of his punishment, that alone complains. Nor is it till the dread task is done, and the ministers of Jupiter have retired, that "the god, unawed by the wrath of gods," bursts forth with his grand apostrophe...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 prayer to a better Parent in those words! ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... Shelley was living, and fell under Byron's 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, 1887, pp. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... "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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... 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

... 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 ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... to Dr. Shaw, who in his sermon appealed to the people, whether Richard was not the express image of his father's person, who was neither ugly nor deformed? Not all the protector's power could have kept the muscles of the mob in awe and prevented their laughing at so ridiculous an apostrophe, had Richard been a little, crooked, withered, hump-back'd monster, as later historians would have us believe—and very idly? Cannot a foul soul inhabit ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... was 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

... medical delegate, who had disdainfully protected Ursus against the theologian, now turned suddenly from auxiliary into assailant. He placed his closed fist on his bundle of papers, which was large and heavy. Ursus received this apostrophe full in the breast,— ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... 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 as he ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... again as if he was made of iron as well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing out arter him—oh, my eye!' The vivid imagination of Master Bates presented the scene before him in too strong colours. As he arrived at this apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... apostrophe, a long and harmonious note from the head-keeper's horn, vibrating in the distance, came and died away upon our ears; after which, a confused clamour of voices arose, and as ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... At this 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

... absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly by, mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring apostrophe of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite seriously, if he thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember Rattler's reply, but I know we all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was something good for ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... of hopeless apathy, from which it 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

... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... figures as well as the most important and those oftenest used are, Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Allegory, Synechdoche, Metonymy, Exclamation, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Vision, Antithesis, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... having sat helpless a while at a table, was ignominiously withdrawn. Twice was this ghostly Jack-in-the-box obtruded on the stage before his time; twice removed again; and yet he showed so little hurry when he was really wanted, that, after an awkward pause, Macbeth had to begin his apostrophe to empty air. The arrival of the belated spectre in the middle, with a jerk that made him nod all over, was the last accident in the chapter, and worthily topped the whole. It may be imagined how lamely matters went throughout ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

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

... haystack. It occurred to the provident laird {p.057} that this would be extremely convenient to fodder his new stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now become proverbial—'By my saul, had ye but four feet, ye should not stand lang there.' In short, as Froissart says of a similar class of feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not too ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Of course our "apostrophe and s" ( 's) comes from the Old English genitive ending -es. The e is preserved in Wednesday ( Old English Wdnes dg). But at a very early period it was thought that John's book, for example, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... compositions," he ranks those "modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature," such as the Confessions and Suspiria de Profundis. The high claim here asserted has been questioned; and short and isolated examples of eloquent apostrophe, and highly wrought imaginative description, have been cited from Rousseau and other masters of style; but De Quincey's power of sustaining a fascinating and elevated strain of "impassioned prose" is allowed to be entirely his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... 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 than deaf. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... buying petitions (prece emaci), and by no means as a rule innocent ones. Few dare to acknowledge their prayers (aperto vivere voto). After sixty lines of indignant remonstrance, he closes with a noble apostrophe, in which some of the thoughts rise almost to a Christian height—"O souls bent to earth, empty of divine things! What boots it to import these morals of ours into the temples, and to imagine what is good in God's sight from the analogies of this sinful flesh?... Why do we not offer Him ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless 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 the moving ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... are rather of a general nature at present—belonging to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say—consisting chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... April 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 ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

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

... laugh closed this apostrophe, and the renegade stood calmly gazing on his victim with an expression of ferocious joy: his dark features seemed to brighten in the glare of infernal revenge, and his strong frame shook with the rapture of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... 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 myself which ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... 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 on the road. The man seemed to lament it much; and it instantly brought into my mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he did it with more ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... hyperbolically as the jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg. 'I am pointed out in public', he asserts, 'as the man who has received a letter from Erasmus.' 'Thrice greatest hero, you great Jove' is a moderate apostrophe for him. 'The Swiss', Zwingli writes in 1516, 'account it a great glory to have seen Erasmus.' 'I know and I teach nothing but Erasmus now,' writes Wolfgang Capito. Ulrich von Hutten and Henry Glareanus both imagine themselves placed beside Erasmus, as Alcibiades stood beside Socrates. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

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

... (if we, as well as Augustus Tomlinson, may indulge in an apostrophe)—beautiful evening! For thee all poets have had a song, and surrounded thee with rills and waterfalls and dews and flowers and sheep and bats and melancholy and owls; yet we must confess that to us, who in this very sentimental age are a bustling, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... or that on Brotachus of Gortyn, the trader who came after merchandise and found death; the dying words of Timomachus and the eternal memory left to his father day by day of the goodness and wisdom of his dead child; the noble apostrophe to mount Gerania, where the drowned and nameless sailor met his doom, the first and one of the most magnificent of the long roll of poems on seafarers lost at sea.[5] In all of them the foremost quality is their simplicity of statement. There are no superlatives. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... apostrophe, Glore, is to be found in Todd's Johnson, and there defined fat. The true meaning is, I doubt not, as above; fat g'lore, ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... the proceedings with a meeting outside his house on Sunday, 27 August, when he delivered from his balcony a direct apostrophe to the King—an oration which may have lost some of its dramatic effect by being read out of a carefully prepared manuscript, but which on that account possesses ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various

... 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 ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... pronouns. A noun has two cases, the nominative which simply names the object: it generally precedes the verb, and answers to the questions who? which? what? The genitive denotes possession and is formed by adding an apostrophe, and the letter s to the nominative; it answers to the question whose? When the plural nominative ends in s the apostrophe only is added: ex. Anne plays. Who? Anne.—Mary's gown. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... After this drunken apostrophe he changed the conversation, and commenced an harangue on religion, (mistaking Coleridge for "un Philosophe" in the continental sense of the word) he talked of the Deity in a declamatory style very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer Mr. Thomas Paine, in his 'Age ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... Peace was seen, then that of Hymen—a real pyrotechnic masterpiece. After the fireworks the Emperor and Empress went first into the record room, then into the concert hall, where was sung a cantata, with words by Arnault and music by Mhul, which began with this apostrophe to ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... reverently upon the institutions of religion, and upon the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality. "I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday School in one hand and Temperance in the other up the glorified steps ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... be criticised as too consciously "posing" in his well-known apostrophe to the ocean; nevertheless it contains a ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... deal was made of the poetic simplicity of the surroundings of the interesting central figure—the girl in her tender bloom among the lilies and roses, which she resembled. We can remember a brilliant novel of the time which had a famous chapter beginning with an impassioned apostrophe to the maiden who met her high destiny "in a palace, in a garden." Another account asserted that the Queen saw the Archbishop of Canterbury alone in her ante-room, and that her first request was for ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... They seemed to understand all that had brought his words, as if they had followed his thoughts to the same apostrophe. ...He was laughing ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... me to the ramparts. There, 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 ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... at length, and was followed by Mr. D'ISRAELI (he spelt it with an apostrophe in those days): a good Disraelian ring about the last sentence ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various

... 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 ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... her apostrophe, she did not observe the door of the cell open, till the prior stood before her. After expressing his pleasure at the renovation in her countenance, he informed her of the departure of the English soldier, and of the alarm which he and Murray had sustained for his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... of course, Miltonic reminiscences in "The Seasons." The moon's "spotted disk" ("Autumn," 1091) is Milton's "spotty globe." The apostrophe to light ("Spring" 90-96) borrows its "efflux divine" from Milton's "bright effluence of bright essence increate" ("Paradise Lost," III. 1-12) ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... country's sorrows touch the heart. Polish literature has sentiment, her music has fire, her men of genius stand out like heroes, her women are adorable. Balzac describes not only one but a not infrequent type when he dedicates Modeste Mignon "To a Polish Lady" in the most exquisite apostrophe which ever graced the entrance-hall to one of the noblest novels ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... Tanswell, and opens up to 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 ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... 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

... usage. 2. Where modern English would always use "than", Lawson sometimes uses "that". This instance is repeated, so it is not conclusively an error. One example is on p. 119, "larger that a Panther". 3. Abbreviated words often end with an apostrophe, rather than a period, which is now the standard. "Through" is usually abbreviated as "thro'". 4. Italics have been kept throughout, with these notable exceptions: in the original, every case of "&c." was italicized; ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... The apostrophe is not used when the word, though contracted in the middle, retains its original pronunciation; as "Dr." or "Mr." But it is used where the contraction is at the end of ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce

... while Scott could put together and 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

... drunken asperity, "permit me to say that you are interrupting a fine apostrophe! . . . And as a culmination, he would have me wed the daughter of your mortal enemy, his mistress! It is some mad dream, Madame; we ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted her. She plunged into her apostrophe with most self-sacrificing vigor at the beginning of the scene, and was prodigal in the use of her voice in its early moments; but when the culmination of its passion was reached, in what would be called the stretto of the piece in the old nomenclature, she could not respond to its increased demands. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the fruit of the connection between Julius and Servilia, mentioned before (see p. 33). But it appears very improbable that Caesar, who had never before acknowledged Brutus to be his son, should make so unnecessary an avowal, at the moment of his death. Exclusively of this objection, the apostrophe seems too verbose, both for the suddenness and urgency of the occasion. But this is not all. Can we suppose that Caesar, though a perfect master of Greek, would at such a time have expressed himself in that language, rather than ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... the poet BYRON spent considerable time in Greece, visiting its many scenes of historic interest, and noting the condition of its people. Here he wrote the second canto of Childe Harold, in which the following fine apostrophe and appeal To Greece, still under Moslem ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... bussen'd (brindled) bull." On his return with this gallant prey, he passed a very large hay-stack. It occurred to the provident laird, that this would be extremely convenient to fodder his new stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it occurred, he was fain to take leave of it with this apostrophe, now proverbial: "By my soul, had ye but four feet, ye should not stand lang there." In short, as Froissard says of a similar class of feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them, that was not too heavy, or too hot. The same mode of house-keeping ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... saluted him as the Honourable Arthur Wellesley, author of the passage, "Though educated at Eton, I have often caught myself envying the quaintly expressed motto of the more ancient seminary amid the Hampshire chalk-hills, i.e. Manners makyth man"; and to this day I associate General Paoli with an apostrophe "O Corsica! O my country, bleeding and inanimate!" etc., and with Miss Plinlimmon's foot-note: "N.B.—The author of these affecting lines, himself a blameless patriot, actually stood godfather to the babe who has since become the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte. Oh, irony! What had ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... it is!' said I. 'But I will go to ten thousand Bastilles first. O, England! England! thou land of liberty and climate of good-sense! thou tenderest of mothers and gentlest of nurses!' cried I, kneeling upon one knee as I was beginning my apostrophe—when the director of Madame L. Blanc's conscience coming in at that instant, and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at his devotions, asked if I stood in want of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... lala 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

... 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 ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... life in incessant and absorbing action. It must have been the vast number of the chances and changes of life he had seen around him, and himself experienced, that inspired him to write that splendid apostrophe: 'O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... roughness, a tone that was almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that these were his principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral, he would break off his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a lengthy prayer, would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in the earlier volumes, remained buried beneath the form of his prose, discernible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more delightful, more harmonious when it was thus veiled from the eye, when the reader could ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... commenced this passionate apostrophe, he had clasped Lucy's hand, and, overcome by his emotions and her own—forgetting all but his love—conscious only of a bewildering joy—she had suffered it to rest for one instant in his clasp. It was but for one instant—the next, struggling from him as he strove to retain her, she started ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... was that of the Nichiren sect. He went into battle with a banneret full of texts, stuck in his back and flying behind him. His example was copied by hundreds of his officers and soldiers. On their flags and guidons was inscribed the famous apostrophe of the Nichiren sect, so often heard in their services and revivals to-day (Namu miy[o] ho ren ge ki[o]), and borrowed from the Saddharma Pundarika: "Glory be to the salvation-bringing ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... 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 another means of saving his life, by giving the indignant ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the glass brushing his hair, and the other one had his notebook, and was reading a page of humorous notes and crying. He didn't mind the one with the hair-brush; but the conduct of the other one cut him to the heart. He never forgave that monkey. His apostrophe, with tears, over the tomb of Adam—only to be fully appreciated in connexion with his satiric indignation over the drivel of the maudlin Mr. Grimes, who "never bored, but he struck water"—is an admirable example of the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... 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

... Yum-Yum). There she goes! To think how entirely my future happiness is wrapped up in that little parcel! Really, it hardly seems worth while! Oh, matrimony!— (Enter Pooh-Bah and Pish-Tush.) Now then, what is it? Can't you see I'm soliloquizing? You have interrupted an apostrophe, sir! PISH. I am the bearer of a letter from his Majesty the Mikado. KO. (taking it from him reverentially). A letter from the Mikado! What in the world can he have to say to me? (Reads letter.) Ah, here it is at ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... the principal Etymological points? Apostrophe, Caret, Dieresis, Macron, Breve, Tilde, Grave Accent, Acute Accent, ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... life, but were pleased, at last, to see it executed with temper and moderation. As to Prior, it is probable that he gave his real opinion, but an opinion that will not be adopted by men of lively fancy. With regard to Gray, when he condemns the apostrophe, in which father Thames is desired to tell who drives the hoop, or tosses the ball, and then adds, that father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt beginning of the first stanza of the bard, to the ballad of Johnny Armstrong, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... under the name of Tammuz[59], with all its seductive abominations, was one of the Canaanitish idolatries into which the Israelites were prone to fall. Father Bresciani considers these rites to be emphatically referred to in the indignant apostrophe of Isaiah:—How is the faithful city become an harlot!... ye shall be confounded with idols to which ye have sacrificed, and be ashamed of the gardens which ye have chosen.[60] And again, in the prophet's terrible denunciation:—Behold, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... than a quarter of an hour. She returned to her cabinet, and gave a quick glance at her image, as she passed before a large Venetian mirror, that reached from floor to ceiling. She smiled, and began an apostrophe to herself, after the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... 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

... onslaught is made 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

... besides, he knew the violence of her passions and her impatience of contradiction, and was sensible that almost any reply which he could make, was likely to throw her into an ecstasy of rage. He was therefore silent; and Magdalen Graeme proceeded with increasing enthusiasm in her apostrophe—"Once more, what seek'st thou, false boy?—seek'st thou the honour thou hast renounced, the faith thou hast abandoned, the hopes thou hast destroyed?—Or didst thou seek me, the sole protectress of thy youth, the only parent whom thou hast known, that thou mayest trample on my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... is, no doubt, the site. But the legend has shed its romance on the immortal heights of the towers of Marbore; and, to account for the fissure in the rock, it must be with these in our recollection, that we read that quaint apostrophe to his sword ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... With slang, etc.; e With words set apart; f Quotation within a quotation; g Together with other marks; h Quotation interrupted by he said; i Omission from a quotation; j Unnecessary in the title of a theme, or as a label for humor or irony 97. The Apostrophe: a In contractions; b To form the possessive; c To form the possessive of nouns ending in s; d Not used with personal possessive pronouns; e To form the plural of certain signs and letters 98. The Question Mark: a After a direct question; b Not followed by a comma within a sentence; c In parentheses ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

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

... glory. Boccaccio, impassioned by all his generous nature, though he regrets he could not raise a statue to Dante, has sent down to posterity more than marble, in the "Life." I venture to give the lofty and bold apostrophe to his fellow-citizens; but I feel that even the genius of our language is tame by the side of the harmonised eloquence of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the same style. Geoffrey teaches how to praise, blame, and ridicule; he gives models of good prosopopoeias; prosopopoeias for times of happiness: an apostrophe to England governed by Richard Coeur-de-Lion (we know how well he governed); prosopopoeia for times of sorrow: an apostrophe to England, whose sovereign (this same Richard) has been killed on a ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... 230.—The 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

... the high-handed measures of the government, which, however, were afterwards expunged when the Senate had become Democratic. One of the most eloquent passages that Clay ever uttered was his famous apostrophe to Vice President Van Buren when presiding over the Senate, in reference to the financial distress which existed throughout the country, and which, of course, he traced to the removal of the deposits. Deputations of great respectability poured in upon the President from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... apostrophe, such as every lover makes when he finds his mistress not quite such a goddess as he had painted her. With the student, however, it sprung from honest anguish of heart. He returned to his lodgings, in pitiable confusion of mind. He now deplored ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... but vivifying nature with its own emotions. Heine has treated many a situation with overwhelming pathos, but none from which he was himself so completely absent as Moerike from the kitchen of The Forsaken Maiden. Goethe's "Hush'd on the hill" is an apostrophe to himself; but peace which the world cannot give and cannot take away is the atmosphere of that poem; whereas Heine's "The shades of the summer evening lie" gets its principal effectiveness from fantastic contributions of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... advancement in his office, if he so contrived as to write a letter that should land her in Brookfield among a scourged, repentant, and forgiven people. That he might understand the position, she went far modestly to reveal her weakness for Mr. Pole. She even consented to let 'Ladies' be the opening apostrophe, provided the word 'Young' went before it: "They'll feel that sting," she said. Braintop stipulated that she should not look till the letter was done; and, observing his pen travelling the lines in quick succession, Mrs. Chump became inspired by a great but uneasy hope. She was only to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Many similes (vii. 55, vii. 76, viii. 74) have been transplanted with nice propriety. Many descriptions, like that of the approach of night (ii-96), of the nightingale mourning for her young (xii. 90), of the flying dream (xiv. 6), have been translated with exquisite taste. Dido's impassioned apostrophe to Aeneas reappears appropriately upon Armida's lips (xvi. 56). We welcome such culled phrases as ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... parts of God's earth, I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads, you know, are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport; then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers,—those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; [1] to an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... it; but what she praises is Temperance, not Abstinence. Her virginity is that of a free maiden, not that of a vowed nun, and there is nothing in it to unfit her to play the part which, when Eve plays it, gives Milton occasion for his well-known apostrophe to true love. Nor is there any inconsistency between his denunciation of "wanton masks" in that passage, and his being the author of Comus. His own mask was as different as possible from those others, the common sort, in which he saw the purveyors of "adulterous ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... applies to 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 ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... noun, we give all its different 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

... as plainly from the apostrophe to the great in the third verse, that Tibbald could not be the person, who was never an author in fashion, or caressed by the great; whereas this single characteristic is sufficient to point out the true hero, who, above ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... Observe especially all that is said by or about Caliban. Observe that Browning makes Caliban usually speak of himself in the third person, and prefixes an apostrophe to the initial verb, as in ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... the driver 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 the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... 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 be expressed by the preposition ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... similar emotion. It was a judgment which others were 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 thing as to ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... a dignity in manly suffering, that commands our sympathies. All who heard this apostrophe to the abode of the Augustines were struck with its simplicity and its moral. They followed the speaker in silence, however, to the point where the path makes its first sudden descent. The spot was favorable to the purpose of Il Maledetto. Though still on the level of the lake, the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... dislike this apostrophe, which Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark—"My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon's—minus the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... 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 his father. Its ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... off with the beauteous brides they have won in Venus' Isle of Joy. The return home is safely effected, and our bold sailors are welcomed in Lisbon with delirious joy, for their journey has crowned Portugal with glory. The poem concludes, as it began, with an apostrophe from ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... 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

... 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 remark worth ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... apostrophe Dumouriez replied in a tone which he intended to combine a sorrowful tenderness with ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... prophet, the various castes and classes of the nation prepared to take a final leave of one who could no longer be known among them. First of all came a band of young marriageable women, who, wheeling in a circle three times about him, sang together a wild apostrophe containing a bitter farewell, which nothing in our ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... snatched convulsively at the handle of the protruded knife; but as soon as he nearly touched it, this end was immediately withdrawn, and the blade end substituted, which made the comic Macbeth instantly draw back again, and recommence his apostrophe. This scene had tickled the audience immensely, and Duncan, amid shouts of laughter, was just drawing the somewhat unwarrantable conclusion ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... the more chaste? Are they the less seductive -? Hear what M. Anatole France says in his apostrophe to the sex: 'Pour faire de vous la terrible merveille que vous etes aujourd'hui, pour devenir la cause indifferente et souveraine des sacrifices et des crimes, il vous a fallu deux choses: la civilisation qui vous donna des voiles, et la religion qui vous donna des scrupules.' The translation ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... 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

... and occasionally picturesque verse. "The Bruce" is really a fine poem. The hero is noble, resolute, and wise. Sir James Douglas is a very perfect, gentle knight. The old Churchman had the true poetic fire in him. He rises into eloquence in an apostrophe to Freedom, and he fights the battle of Bannockburn over again with great valour, shouting, and flapping of standards. In England, nature seemed to have exhausted herself in Chaucer, and she lay quiescent till Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt came, the immediate precursors of Spenser, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... can be more spirited than the enthusiasm of Hector, who, in the transport of his joy, breaks out in the following apostrophe to his horses. He has, in imagination, already forced the Grecian entrenchments, set the fleet in flames, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer



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



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