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
He hired four obscure artists to paint the illustrations exactly as he wanted them, and then got some second-rate poets to apostrophize the plants in sticky verse.
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
No bright and overwhelming genius appeared in 1947 to light the way and apostrophize the age.
From Time Magazine Archive
So constantly did he apostrophize the barber to hurry, wagging a restless jaw, that blood oozed from several nicks when the beard had been removed.
From Joan of Arc of the North Woods by Day, Holman
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
Then, in an answer that he used as his peroration, he apostrophized the American free enterprise system in a way that few of his predecessors have done.
From Time Magazine Archive
Charles Dudley, who had till now assisted Bacon in supporting his fainting bride, resigned his charge to Mr. Harrison and ran to Mrs. Fairfax, supposing himself to be the person thus piteously apostrophized.
From The Cavaliers of Virginia, vol. 1 of 2 or, The Recluse of Jamestown; An historical romance of the Old Dominion by Caruthers, William A. (Alexander)
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
"There's more in those letters than meets the eye," Cleek said aloud, apostrophizing the wall-paper and the fireplace in turn.
From The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel by Hanshew, Mary E.
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.
