apostrophize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of apostrophize
First recorded in 1605–15; apostrophe 2 + -ize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Or that the prolix Gaev — a man as likely to apostrophize a piece of furniture as the stars above — keeps promising he’ll be quiet.
From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2011
No bright and overwhelming genius appeared in 1947 to light the way and apostrophize the age.
From Time Magazine Archive
Even Sweden's cautious Premier Per Albin Hansson was stirred to apostrophize a common Scandinavian labor market, economic collaboration, common Nordic citizenship.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thus did Adolf Hitler apostrophize his beloved season, spring.
From Time Magazine Archive
After an actor has been beheaded, he has been known to pickup the false head and apostrophize it while making his exit from the stage.
Ali Tepelena, once apostrophized by Byron, was real; Albania certainly exists.
From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2018
Sealing the message of political friendship was a video of the center’s namesake, apostrophized as “the greatest Irish American,” speaking during his visit to Ireland in 1963.
From Washington Post ● May 18, 2016
Intriguingly, many of the cultural figures whom Harrison has apostrophized in her art are men—Amerigo Vespucci, Charles Darwin, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, as well as DiCaprio, Cheney, and, in his “Scarface” role, Al Pacino.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 15, 2014
When Prince von Starhemberg was able to speak at last he apostrophized the dead Chancellor with the intimate pronoun.
From Time Magazine Archive
His colleagues apostrophized him, seized him by the arms, and called upon him to order back the crowd.
From Garrick's Pupil by Filon, Auguston
So why do we still read him, and why do so many people still flock to his plays, despite their archaisms lichened with footnotes and, to citizens of our ironic century, his easily parodied apostrophizing?
From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2021
Now, when she sat down to write in her notebook, she found herself apostrophizing anything that crossed her mind, addressing concepts and objects directly, trying to name their component parts.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 22, 2016
On glimpsing her, Poe might have written his poem "To Helen" apostrophizing the most beguiling beauty of the ancient world.
From Time Magazine Archive
For all its apostrophizing of the open road, most of the nation dutifully drives at 55 m.p.h., willingly undergoes searches before boarding planes, humbly douses cigarettes from time to time.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Give him to me,” she added, taking him from me, and apostrophizing him.
From The First Violin A Novel by Fothergill, Jessie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
