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
Thus did Adolf Hitler apostrophize his beloved season, spring.
From Time Magazine Archive
So did one medieval minstrel apostrophize his hero, suggesting that a good hunting dog might be a duke's best friend.
From Time Magazine Archive
If the author be old-fashioned enough to apostrophize the Gentle Reader, I know he must mean me, and docilely give ear, and presently tumble head-foremost into the treacherous pit he has digged for me.
From The Lock and Key Library The most interesting stories of all nations: American by Julian Hawthorne
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
Last week he apostrophized the faces on Mount Rushmore as those of fellow protectionists, and he was right.
From Time Magazine Archive
"For which you might readily give your apology, as a better mannered man has already done," apostrophized Cleek inwardly.
From The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel by Mary E. Hanshew
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
Poor ignorant beast of the field!" he had said, apostrophizing the unconscious Brisket, "how little knowest thou how ill those flowers become thee, or for what purpose thou art thus caressed!
From The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson By One of the Firm by Anthony Trollope
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