Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Synonyms

apostrophize

American  
[uh-pos-truh-fahyz] / əˈpɒs trəˌfaɪz /
especially British, apostrophise

verb (used with object)

apostrophized, apostrophizing
  1. to address by apostrophe.


verb (used without object)

apostrophized, apostrophizing
  1. to utter an apostrophe.

apostrophize British  
/ əˈpɒstrəˌfaɪz /

verb

  1. (tr) rhetoric to address an apostrophe to

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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

Thus did Adolf Hitler apostrophize his beloved season, spring.

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

The fishermen's wives on the Scottish coast apostrophize the fish they sell, after their husbands' perilous voyages, and sing, "Call them lives o' men."

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 by Various

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

Emperor" Cook of the Miners' Federation apostrophized Premier Baldwin in a public speech: "You say, Mr. Baldwin, that you have no desire to lower the miners' standard of living.

From Time Magazine Archive

Donald, me boy," he apostrophized, "you have been rejected.

From The Road to Understanding by Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

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

He once wrote: "In the great bulk of my prayers, vocal and mental, all my life, I have not felt I was talking to God in his presence, but rather apostrophizing him in his absence."

From Time Magazine Archive

On glimpsing her, Poe might have written his poem "To Helen" apostrophizing the most beguiling beauty of the ancient world.

From Time Magazine Archive

The brig was immovable, and Barny finished with a duet volley of prayers and curses together, apostrophizing the hard case of a man being "done out o' his nor-aist coorse."

From Stories of Comedy by Rossiter Johnson

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

Get a word


Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Dictionary.com's Learning Companion

Go beyond just looking up words.
Remember them forever with VocabTrainer.

Start training